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SELECT 



ESSAYS OF MACAULAY 



MILTON, BUNYAN, JOHNSON, GOLDSMITH, 
MADAME D'ARBLAY 



EDITED BY 



SAMUEL THURBER 



>^ CQFYR/GAfr 

AUG 31 I89I 



Boston 

ALLYN AND BACON 

i8q2 



\X 



W 






Copyright, 1891, 
By SAMUEL THURBER. 



Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston. 
Pressvvork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 



INTRODUCTION. 



To be perfectly adapted for reading and study in the 
class-room, a selection from our literature must meet 
these conditions : it must be interesting, both in matter 
and in manner, to the young persons for whom it is 
intended ; it must have a genuinely important content, 
that is, its subject must be worthy of serious attention 
and must promise a substantial gain in knowledge ; it 
must be a masterpiece of English, a model of clearness, 
simplicity, and vigor. 

The literary essays of Macaulay not only fulfil these 
conditions, but they offer other advantages for school- 
room study which render them, for a certain stage of the 
high-school course, perhaps the most eligible prose writ- 
ings in our literature. Macaulay 's reading had been 
wonderfully comprehensive, and his memory retained 
the results of this reading in a manner unexampled 
among modern writers, ^ence he illustrates his mean- 
ing, as he develops his subject, with constant allusion 
and citation, challenging his reader with comparisons, 
and never suffering him to relax his attention. His 
paragraphs are full of names or of suggestions of names. 
He assumes that his reader has the same acquaintance 
with the older literature as himself. To catch instantly 
the entire pertinency and appositeness of every allusion 
of this writer would require that the reader should him- 



iv Select Essays of Macaulay. 

self be endowed with equal gifts and possessed of equal 
stores. The reader of Macaulay must often stop and 
think ; he must summon up all his historical and literary 
memories ; often he must inaugurate fresh reading under 
the stimulus of an off-hand citation that evidently was 
deemed by the author to throw a flood of light on the 
subject in hand. 

While, therefore, many writers are interesting in their 
several ways, Macaulay's way lies peculiarly in the 
direction of provocation to further examination both of 
his main topics and of his incidental references. An 
interested reader always reads concentrically; that is, 
with some nucleus about which books and authors group 
themselves with more or less mutual relation. Such a 
centre is sure to be found in one or another essay of 
Macaulay. Each essay requires at once certain further 
research. The other essays are soon found to help won- 
derfully towards the understanding of the one first read. 
This reading must be done with pencil in hand. The 
reader's own notes thus become his all-sufficient guide 
in choosing his next books. Thus reading becomes 
organic, having a principle of structure, a clear aim and 
purpose, instead of being amorphous, with here a book 
and there a book picked up by chance or at the advice 
of another person. For example, the essays of Macaulay 
touching eighteenth-century themes suggest an immense 
range of possible reading of a most interesting character. 
The stimulus which these essays give to such reading 
is far more potent than the pages of histories of litera- 
ture could be, for the reason that in the essays we see 
and feel the effects of reading upon the culture and the 
power of a writer, while the histories give us only exter- 



Introduction. v 

nal facts. The young reader is apt to ask for a list of 
books to read, and the okl adviser is often too willing 
to accede to the request. But prearranged lists of books 
are fatal to inner, spontaneous interest. No one reads 
through a list except under duress. Not a list of items 
to be checked off, but a centre, a starting-point, is the 
true gift of the school-room Mentor to his learners. The 
lines of progress that radiate from a good centre are 
infinite both in their number and in their extent. All 
good reading is gradually included within their reach. 
The atoms of acquisition come in this way to cohere and 
to take shape in well-rounded culture. 

For yet another reason Macaulay is a writer peculiarly 
stimulating to youth : he is himself always a youth in 
the fervor and the intensity of his sympathies. What 
he admires he admires extremely, and what he hates he 
hates with most cordial hatred. It is usual to say that 
he goes too far, and praises too highly, or depreciates 
more than is fair. It is plain, however, that were 
Macaulay's feelings less ardently enlisted in his exposi- 
tions, these expositions would tend to approach the 
commonplace, and would never have become the power 
in literature that they are. It is impossible to conceive 
an earnest and moving piece of writing whose chief con- 
cern should be to balance praise and blame, and show 
up merits and demerits in equal measure. Macaulay's 
function in literature was not cold criticism. He was 
far removed from indifference towards the persons and 
the things he describes. His service was to arouse in 
English readers an interest in the great events of their 
history and their literature. He is the most popular of 
writers. Nor will it be said that his judgments, though 



vi Select Essays of Macaulay, 

often expressed in strong language, are wrong and per- 
verted judgments. For youthful readers he may be 
accepted as a safe guide. His exaggerated expressions 
are never intended to conceal insufficiency of knowledge. 
He never indulges in mere conventional j)hrasing, the 
besetting sin of young and ambitious writers. He is 
absolutely sincere and original. Familiarity with such 
a writer during the period of life when habits are form- 
ing must be altogether wholesome. 

The English teacher Avill naturally find an advantage 
in reading with his class selections that discuss his own 
especial theme. As lessons in literary history, as well 
as lessons in English composition, these studies will be 
fruitful and memorable. In connection with the in- 
cidental researches which they suggest, they will con- 
stitute an opportunity for the acquisition of knowledge, 
and for the general discipline of the taste that, from the 
pedagogic point of view, lacks absolutely no element of 
desirableness. 

Such reading as is here offered the young student 
must be done as work, not as mere amusement. The 
pencil must be kept in constant use, and the note-book 
must be ahvays at hand. The student must be his own 
annotator. No more in reading a piece of English than 
in working out an algebra lesson should the learner 
expect to have his work done for him. Only what he 
earns will he ever possess, though what he borrows from 
another, or has given him, may meet the requirements/ 
of an examination. 

No pedagogic maxim can be adduced that shall favor 
giving the learner results without leading him through 
the processes through which the results Avere obtained. 



Introduction. vii 

Results without research are dead and useless. Research 
without results is excellent and vital, because always 
accompanied with hope. Notes are usually a mere incu- 
bus upon interest. They put an obstacle in the way of 
the teacher, who would like to exercise his skill by lead- 
ing his pupils through the various stages of growing 
curiosity and zealous search up to the consummation of 
successful finding. Those editors who steal from the 
teacher his opportunity of teaching are really his worst 
foes. Strange ideas of the pedagogic province seem to 
be lield by annotators who try to tell the pupil every- 
thing, as if all the teacher had to do was to ask ques- 
tions and o^et thing's told ag^ain, — re-cited. 

As there is appended to the present selection of 
the essays of Macaulay a body of " notes," the anno- 
tator desires to explain exactly what ground these 
notes cover, and for what purpose they were prepared. 
In nearly every case where a note appears, it will be 
found to ask a question or to suggest a bit of research, 
with a hint as to the direction in which the research 
must be made. In no instance is a note given Avhere 
the needed investigation is obvious and can be readily 
planned. That any notes at all of this kind are given 
is hereby confessed to be, so far forth, a trenching on 
the proper field of the teacher, whose duty it is to 
prescribe tasks and furnish the needful helps for their 
performance ; and the annotator accordingly offers his 
apologies to those teachers who find his f-uggestions 
superfluous, and he would rejoice to be able to think 
tliat all teachers belonged to this class. On the. proper 
field of the pupil, however, he has not trenched. If, 
like a visitor to the class-room, he has asked a few ques- 



viii Select Essays of Macaiday. 

tions that the teacher would soon have asked himself, 
he has not thwarted the teacher by whispering to the 
pupil his answers. The great bulk of the annotable 
matter has been left without annotation, in order that 
the activity of the student may find free play. Only 
where the possibility or the desirableness of incidental 
reading has been somewhat less obvious, has any ques- 
tion been asked, and only when the books to be con- 
sulted have been such as would not instantly suggest 
themselves, have hints been given as to what to read. 

Occasionally the needed research has been a little 
troublesome to make. In a few such cases results liave 
been given, in view of the fact that the book is destined 
for use by young persons whose time is limited, and 
that investigable matter, in any Macaulay text, is 
already superabundant. The annotator believes that 
he has omitted no difficult point. Allusions not noted 
he has thought fairly within the reach of high-school 
classes. A considerable portion of the entire mass of 
the notes is occupied by quotations of interesting rele- 
vant passages that should be read in connection with 
the text. 

It sometimes happens that Macaulay names an ob- 
scure and unimportant person with some epithet, or in 
connection Avith a context, that sufficiently explains this 
person's appearance, so that any note at all becomes 
needless. It is by no means always necessary to run 
to the biographical dictionaries when a name appears. 
Sometimes investigation will reveal only so much as the 
author himself tells in a word or two, and to find even 
this will cost time. If Macaulay says a writer is worth- 
less, it is no increase of knowledge to find in what year 



Introduction. ix 

such a writer wrote his worthless book. Discrimination 
is necessary in reading pieces so overcharged with allu- 
sion. It is only the ancient classics whose every word 
is precious. The reader of English must reach the end 
of the chapter. Infinite other chapters await his eager 
attention. Hence the English reader must learn to 
recognize and set aside what is unimportant. Even tlie 
unimportant things will gradually gain significance as 
the reader's acquaintance with literature extends, and 
the young reader must not at the outset be too much 
loaded with erudition whose relation to what he is 
studying he cannot appreciate. 

But by far the greater portion of Macaulay's allusions 
must be worked out with whatever labor of researcli is 
necessary to make them yield their meaning. This 
labor constitutes the getting of the lesson. A lesson in 
English literature should be got by a method analogous 
to that which, in the physical sciences, has already come 
fully into vogue, and is sometimes called the laboratory 
method. In physics it is no longer customary to let a 
student merely read a formula and Avitness an experi- 
ment. He must himself conduct the experiment, ob- 
serve the phenomena, and deduce and formulate the 
law. In literature the entire mass of phenomena lies 
concealed in books. The art of research is here the art 
of using libraries. A beginner is bewildered as he con- 
fronts a large library. Graduall}^ he acquires skill and 
begins to find things with ease. The labor of this 
search is pleasant, and the successes give it zest, while 
the tantalizing failures pique and stimulate perseverance. 
The study of history, which the learner is carrying on 
at the same time with his English, is also a library 



Select Essays of Macaulay. 



study, and the same familiarity with books which he 
gains in the one helps him in the other. Thus these 
studies are manifestly such as cannot be carried on 
while the student sits motionless at a desk and pores 
over a single book. The method of explanatory notes 
presupposes a dead learning-by-heart, Avith the young 
people sitting in straight lines, their eyes fixed on their 
lessons, their thoughts bent on committing these lessons 
to memory. The library method assumes a collection 
of books and such freedom of movement as choice and 
consultation of them necessarily imply. It assumes, 
moreover, pleasant and free relations with the larger 
libraries outside the schoolroom that all American com- 
munities are rapidly coming to possess. 

The present editor has had in view schools of second- 
ary grade ; that is, high schools and academies. He has 
taken for granted that such schools have collections of 
books, just as, if he were preparing a text-book of physics, 
he would take for granted the presence in the schools of 
proper laboratories. There is no such thing as reading 
one book without the help of other books. There must 
be perpetual reference from book to book. This is the 
case even in easy reading. In reading that is perpetually 
setting tasks of elucidation and verification the presence 
of a good reference library becomes an absolute neces- 
sity. The best dictionaries, the best encyclopaedias, the 
standard histories and biographies, complete editions of 
the principal authors, must be always within reach of 
the student. It is not the business of a pedagogic edi- 
tor to dispense readers from the necessity of procuring 
the means of research. Rather is it his province to show 
readers how to conduct research and what apparatus of 
research is most serviceable. 



I 



Introduction. xi 

The custom prevalent in the schools of dwelling a long 
time on small portions of Latin and Greek text must not 
be allowed to establish itself in the English work also. 
An English piece must be read and got through with. 
If we adopt Professor Marcli's method of exhaustive ques- 
tioning, we shall never arrive at any goal and shall never 
make English interesting. Work in English should be 
vigorous and rapid, taking many things for granted. 
The skilful teacher surmises when his pupils fail to 
understand a point riglitly, and halts the column of 
march only on such occasions. Tliat the reading of such 
selections as those here offered may go oft" smoothly and 
intelligently, due preparation should be made. The 
teacher should look over a few pages in advance and 
note the points at which special difficulties of any kind 
will arise. These points, as they require more elaborate 
investigation, he will separate from the text when he 
assigns the lesson, and he will exempt the class e.n masse 
from giving them attention. The text, thus tempora- 
rily cleared of the chief difficulties, is prescribed to all 
the class, who must work it out and be prepared on it 
at the next lesson. At the same time the special points 
of difficulty are dealt out to individuals, one to each, to 
be looked up and reported on. The interest of a class 
exercise is much enhanced if the individual pupils bring 
different contributions, so that each is listened to with 
curiosity on a fresh topic. Moreover, if all alike are 
required to make the same investigations, the reference 
books may not suffice to go round. All the obscure 
points are reported on, and all the pupils get the bene- 
fit of the explanation. Each pupil has had as much 
research to make as he had time and opportunity for. 



xii Select Essays of Macaulay. 

and the class can at once pass on to fresh woods and 
pastures new. In this way it is legitimately feasible to 
cover considerable ground in the class reading of Eng- 
lish texts while pursuing strictly the method of research. 

The points of special difficulty may well be looked up 
a few days in advance of the time when the class is to 
read as a lesson the passages where they occur, and 
these may in some cases be given to pupils as themes, 
which must be punctually written out, ready for read- 
ing at the precise moment when, being needed as eluci- 
dations, they will be appreciated and will be listened to 
with attention. The pupil who has such a theme to 
prepare will ordinarily need assistance in making his 
researches. To give this assistance is the teachei\s 
business. The teacher must, accordingly, be prepared, 
when he assigns such a theme to a pupil, to say where 
the desired matter can be found. He must know 
whether the books that will have to be used are in the 
school library or must be looked for in the public library 
of the town. If the books are absolutely inaccessible to 
the pupils, the themes whose elaboration depends on 
these books must not be given out at all. In such case 
it is the teacher's privilege to present as a downright 
gift the matter which, in better circumstances, it would 
be more proper to let the pupils work for and earn the 
right to possess. 

The school should prepare for life, an-d not for exam- 
inations. The memorizing method, the cram method, 
the note method, is good only for examinations. The 
English that pupils are destined to read for their enter- 
tainment and culture as mature men and women will 
not be annotated. It is riglit to keep in view the con- 



Introduction. xiii 

ditions that will actually exist. The habit of depending 
on notes is enfeebling. Books in the ancient languages 
are always read with the help of notes, and books in the 
ancient languages have accordingly ceased tQ be read 
except by a caste of special devotees whose work in life 
continues to have some relation to the pedagogic func- 
tion. But all men and women read English books. 
To read English books with intelligence, the habit of 
consulting the various collateral helps, of drawing upon 
the stores of related knowledge, is of all importance. 
It is doubtless a trouble and annoyance to use the dic- 
tionary. But only by using the dictionary can one 
attain to a command of the English language. He Avho 
cannot bring himself often to turn aside from the book 
he holds in his hand to the other books on his shelves 
finds himself limited in his reading to the weakest and 
shallowest books of the day. He can read no history, 
no biography, no travels ; he can read nothing whatever 
that is old, nothing that was produced from the stores 
of large and generously equipped minds, nothing that 
reflects the life and manners of its generation, nothing 
that employs a vocabulary richer and more varied than 
that which serves the petty uses of every day. 

Some of the books of reference which a high-school 
library should contain for the use of its English classes 
are the following : — 

Webster's International Dictionary. Among other usefiil things, 
the new International contains a revised edition of Wheeler's 
Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction. 

A good encyclopaedia. The Britannica is not too large. Even 
the best will often be found to give no help. 

Adams's Dictionary of English Literature. 



xiv Select Ussat/s of Macaulay, 

Brewer's Reader's Handbook of Allusions, References, Plots, 
and Stories. 

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, giving the derivation, 
source, or origin of common phrases, allusions, and words that have 
a tale to tell. 

Taine's English Literature. 

Cruden's Concordance to the English Bible. 

Scoones's Four Centuries of English Letters. 

Macaulay's Works, entire. 

Knight's Popular History of England. 

Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History. 

Hare's Walks in London. 

Baedeker's London. 

Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English Literature. 

The books here named are given as specimens of ref- 
erence books proper. Their number could be increased 
to any extent desirable. But reference will almost as 
often be fruitfully made to books that do not come 
under this denomination. Good editions should be pro- 
cured, as fast as the means of the school allow, of the 
chief English writers. It is almost daily the case that 
an obscure point in the selection that is being studied 
can be explained by reference to some other work of 
the same writer. This often happens to readers of 
Macaulay. In works of history, moreover, the library 
cannot be too well stocked. Both the classes in history 
and those in English will find great furtherance in an 
abundance of the standard works of history. 

As here printed, the essay on Milton is shortened by 
the omission of a portion that seemed to the editor some- 
what less interesting to young students. Very slight 
omissions from the other essays will explain themselves. 



SELECT ESSAYS OF MACAULAY. 



>t«c 



MILTON. 

(August, 1825.) 

Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy 
keeper of the state papers, in the course of his researches 
among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin 
manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of the 
foreign despatches written by Milton while he filled the 
office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish 
Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up 
in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. 
On examination, the large manuscript i:>roved to be the 
long lost essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, 
according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the 
Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, 
it is well known, held the same political opinions with his 
illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon 
conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions 
of the Government during that persecution of the Whigs 
which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, 
and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, 
this work may have been brought to the office in which 
it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the 
manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a 
genuine relic of the great poet. 

1 



2 Se\'ct Essays of Macaulay. 

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his Majesty to edit 
and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task 
in a manner honorable to his talents and to his character. 
His version is not indeed very easy or elegant ; but it is 
entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes 
abound wdth interesting quotations, and have the rare merit 
of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the 
work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious 
opinions, and tolerant towards those of others. 

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. 
It is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not 
exactly in the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiq- 
uity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness 
which characterizes the diction of our academical Pharisees. 
The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his 
composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He 
does not, in short, sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic 
refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to 
use many words 

" That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin 
were his mother-tongue ; and, where he is least happy, his 
failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, not 
from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him 
what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears 
the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients. 

We wish to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it 
may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Cap- 
uchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a 
saint till they have awakened the devotional feelings of 
their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of 
his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On 
the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the late 



Milton. " 3 

interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great 
and good man is still m the hands of all, to say something 
of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are con- 
vinced, wril the severest of our readers blame us if, on an 
occasion like the present, we turn for a short time from the 
topics of the day to commemorate, in all love and reverence, 
the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the states- 
man, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the 
champion and the martyr of English liberty. 

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it is 
of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general 
suffrage of the civilized world, his place has been assigned 
among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, 
however, though outvoted, have not been silenced. There 
are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in 
the same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. 
The works they acknowledge, considered in themselves, 
may be classed among the noblest productions of the human 
mind. But they will not allow the author to rank with 
those great men who, born in the infancy of civilization, 
supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, 
though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to pos- 
terity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, 
inherited what his predecessors created ; he lived in an 
enlightened age ; he received a finished education ; and we 
must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his 
powers, make large deductions in consideration of these 
advantages. 

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the 
remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle 
with more unfavorable circumstances than Milton. He 
doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been 
born "an age too late." Eor this notion Johnson has 
thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. 
The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better 



4 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived 
no advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, 
or from the learning which he had acquired ; and he looked 
back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple 
words and vivid impressions. 

We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost 
necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently ad- 
mire those great works of imagination which have appeared 
in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they 
have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that 
the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great 
poem produced in a civilized age. We cannot understand 
why those wdio believe in that most orthodox article of 
literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, 
should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. 
Surely the uniformity of the jjhenomenon indicates a cor- 
responding uniformity in the cause. 

The fact is, that common observers reason from the prog- 
ress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative 
arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. 
Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separat- 
ing and combining them. Even when a system has been 
formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. 
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed 
to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by 
fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, there- 
fore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, 
and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their 
pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily sur- 
pass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read 
Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on political economy could 
teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any 
intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself 
for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great 
Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. 



Milton. 5 

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with 
sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress 
of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects 
of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments 
which are necessary to the mechanical ox^erations of the 
musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the 
machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its 
rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and 
then abstract. They advance from particular images to gen- 
eral terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society 
is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical. 

This change in the language of men is partly the cause 
and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the na- 
ture of their intellectual operations, of a change by which 
science gains and poetry loses. Generalization is necessary 
to the advancement of knowledge ; but particularity is 
indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In pro- 
portion as men know more and think more, they look less 
at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make 
better theories and worse poems. They give us vague 
phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead 
of men. They may be better able to analyze human nature 
than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business 
of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He 
may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may 
refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius ; or 
he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on 
such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so 
called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived 
respecting the lachrymal glands, or the circulation of the 
blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of 
his Aurora. If Shakspeare had written a book on the mo- 
tives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it 
would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable 
that it would have contained half so much able reasoninor 



6 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

on the subject as is to be fouud in the fable of the Bees. 
But could Mandeville have created an lago? Well as he 
knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would 
he have been able to combine those elements in such a man- 
ner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man ? 

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy 
poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything 
which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsound- 
ness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even 
all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many 
metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the 
highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing 
words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the 
imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the 
painter does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of 
poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the 
vigor and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable 
on account of the just notion which they convey of the 
art in which he excelled : 

" As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy '^ which he as- 
cribes to the poet, — a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a 
frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry ; but it is the 
truth of madness. The reasonings are just, but the jorem- 
ises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, 
everything ought to be consistent ; but those first supposi- 
tions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts 
to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. 
Hence of all people children are the most imaginative. 
They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. 
Every image which is strongly presented to their mental 



Milton, T 

eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, what- 
ever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or 
Lear as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Eed 
Eidinghood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves can- 
not speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet, in 
spite of her knowledge, she believes ; she weeps ; she 
trembles ; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should 
feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the 
despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. 

In a rude state of society, men are children with a greater 
variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society 
that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its 
highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much 
intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of 
just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and 
eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones ; but 
little poetry. Men will judge and compare ; but they will not 
create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment 
on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them, But they will 
scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced 
on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the pleni- 
tude of belief. The Greek rhapsodists, according to Plato, 
could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. 
The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while he shouts 
his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of 
Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to 
modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very 
rare in a civilized community, and most rare among those 
who participate most in its improvements. They linger 
longest among the peasantry. 

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a 
magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. 
And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry 
effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the 
light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the 



8 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and 
the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues 
and lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls up 
grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible 
advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of 
truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. 

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to 
be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must 
take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn 
much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted 
hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents 
will be a hindrance to him. His difiiculties will be pro- 
portioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are 
fashionable among his contemporaries ; and that proficiency 
will in general be proportioned to the vigor and activity of 
his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacrifices and 
exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a 
modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, 
intense labor, and long meditation employed in this struggle 
against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say 
absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble ap- 
plause. 

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed 
over greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned 
education : he was a profound and elegant classical scholar : 
he had studied all the mysteries of rabbinical literature : he 
was intimately acquainted with every language of modern 
Europe from which either pleasure or information was then 
to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later 
times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his 
Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the 
first order ; and his poems in the ancient language, though 
much praised by those who have never read them, are 
wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit 
and ingenuity, had little imagination : nor, indeed, do we 



Milton. 9 

think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. 
The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But 
Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages 
till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan ele- 
gance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin 
styles as an habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster. 

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, 
costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere may be 
found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils 
on which this rarity flourishes are in general as ill suited 
to the production of vigorous native poetry as the flower- 
pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That the author 
of the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to 
Manso was truly wonderful. Never before were such 
marked originality and such exquisite mimicry found 
together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems of Milton the 
artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably 
preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them 
a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which 
distinguishes them from all other writings of the same 
class. They remind us of the amusements of those angelic 
warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : 

' ' About him exercised heroic games 
The unarmed youth of heaven ; but nigh at hand 
Celestial armory, shields, helms, and spears. 
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." 

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the 
genius of Milton ungirds itself without catching a glimpse 
of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed 
to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over 
every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his 
mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight 
of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with 
its own heat and radiance. 



10 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete 
examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long 
been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, 
the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excel- 
lence of that style which no rival has been able to equal 
and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest 
perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and 
to which every ancient and every modern language has con- 
tributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In 
the vast field of criticism on which we are entering, innu- 
merable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the 
harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a strag- 
gling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. 

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton 
is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of 
which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so 
much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests ; not so 
much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other 
ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the 
mind through conductors. The most unimaginative man 
must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, 
and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole 
upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light that it 
is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton 
cannot be comprehended or enjoyed unless the mind of the 
reader co-operate with that of the writer. He does not 
paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. 
He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He 
strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out 
the melody. 

We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The 
expression in general means nothing ; but, applied to the 
writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts 
like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious mean- 
ing than in its occult power. There would seem, at first 



Milton. 11 

sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. Bnt 
they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pro- 
nonnced, than the past is present and the distant near. New 
forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the 
burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change 
the structure of the sentence ; substitute one synonym for 
another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses 
its power ; and he who should then hope to conjure with it 
would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the 
Arabian tale, when he stood crying, " Open Wheat," '' Open 
Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but " Open 
Sesame." The miserable failure of Dry den in his attempt 
to translate into his own diction some parts of the Paradise 
Lost is a remarkable instance of this. 

In support of these observations, we may remark that 
scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more 
generally known or more frequently repeated than those 
wlitch are little more than muster-rolls of names. They 
are not always more appropriate or more melodious than 
other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of 
them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. 
Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, 
like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they 
produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrin- 
sic value. One transports us back to a remote period of 
history. Another places us among the novel scenes and 
manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear 
classical recollections of childhood, the school-room, the dog- 
eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings 
before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the 
trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, 
the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achieve- 
ments of enamored knights, and the smiles of rescued 
princesses. 

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner 



12 Select Essays of Macaulay, 

more happily displaj'ed than in the Allegro and the Pen- 
seroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of 
language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of per- 
fection. These poems differ from others as attar of roses 
differs from ordinary rose-water, the close-packed essence 
from the thin, diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so 
much poems as collections of hints, from each of which the 
reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is 
a text for a stanza. 

The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, 
though of very different merit, offer some marked points 
of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of 
plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so 
essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The busi- 
ness of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and 
to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he 
attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. 
The effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on 
the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a 
scene-shifter. Hence it was that the tragedies of Byron 
were his least successful performances. They resemble 
those pasteboard j^ictures invented by the friend of chil- 
dren, Mr. Newbery, in which a single movable head goes 
round twenty different bodies, so that the same face looks 
out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, the 
furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the char- 
acters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown 
and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But 
this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the 
inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to 
abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions. 

Between these hostile elements many great men have en- 
deavored to effect an amalgamation, but never with com- 
plete success. The Greek drama, on the model of which 
the Samson was written, spruns: from the ode. The dia- 



Milton. 13 

logue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of 
its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian 
dramatists co-operated with the circumstances under which 
tragedy made its first appearance, ^schylus was, head 
and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far 
more intercourse with the East than in the days of Homer ; 
and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in 
war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following 
generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. 
From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem that they 
still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to Egypt 
and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural 
that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the 
Oriental style. And that style, we think, is discernible in 
the works of Pindar and ^schylus. The latter often re- 
minds us of the Hebrew writers. The Book of Job, indeed, 
in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblance to 
some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are 
absurd ; considered as choruses, they are above all praise. 
If, for instance, we examine the address of Clytaemnestra 
to Agamemnon on his return, or the description of the 
seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, 
we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we 
forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we 
shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and 
magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dra- 
matic as was consistent with its original form. His por- 
traits of men have a sort of similarity ; but it is the simi- 
larity, not of a painting, but of a bass-relief. It suggests 
a resemblance ; but it does not produce an illusion. Eu- 
ripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was 
a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. 
Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what 
was excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad ser- 
mons for good odes. 



14 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, 
much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. 
Indeed, the caresses which this partiality leads our country- 
man to bestow on " sad Electra's poet " sometimes remind 
us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long 
ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that 
this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was 
injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken 
^schylus for his model, he would have given himself up to 
the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the treas- 
ures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those 
dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered 
it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile 
things in their own nature inconsistent he has failed, as 
every one else must have failed. We cannot identify our- 
selves with the characters, as in a good play. We cannot 
identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The 
conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, 
neutralize each other. We are by no means insensible to 
the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of 
the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the open- 
ing speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so 
striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, 
we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of 
Milton. 

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian masque, 
as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek tragedy. 
It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which 
exists in any language. It is as far superior to The Faithful 
Shepherdess, as The Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, 
or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton 
that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He under- 
stood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did 
not feel for it the same veneration which he entertained for 
the remains of Athenian and Itoman poetry, consecrated by 



Milton. 15 

so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, more- 
over, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which 
his mind had a deadly, antipathy. He could stoop to a plain 
style, sometimes even to a bald style ; but false brilliancy 
was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a 
russet attire ; but she turned with disgust from the finery 
of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chim- 
ney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears 
are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but 
capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. 

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which 
he afterward neglected in the Samson. He made his 
Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dra- 
matic only in semblance. He has not attempted a fruitless 
struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that 
species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded, 
wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must 
be read as majestic soliloquies ; and he who so reads them 
will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sublimity, 
and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, how- 
ever, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the 
illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which 
are lyric in form as well as in spirit. " I should much com- 
mend,'^ says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to 
Milton, ^' the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me 
with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, 
whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet 
nothing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. 
It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, 
when he is discharged from the labor of uniting two incon- 
gruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral 
raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. 
Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly 
form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial free- 
dom and beauty ; he seems to cry exultingly, 



16 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

" Now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly or I can run," 

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the 
Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells 
of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr 
scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides. 

There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which 
we would willingly make a few remarks. Still more wil- 
lingly would we enter into a detailed examination of that 
admirable poem, the Paradise Eegained, which, strangely 
enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an instance of 
the blindness of the parental affection which men of letters 
bear toward the offspring of their intellects. That Milton 
was mistaken in preferring this work, excellent as it is, 
to the Paradise Lost, we readily admit. But we are sure 
that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the Paradise 
Regained is not more decided than the superiority of the 
Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made 
its appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us from dis- 
cussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraor- 
dinary production which the general suffrage of critics has 
placed in the highest class of human compositions. 

The only poem of modern times which can be compared 
with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. The sub- 
ject of Milton, in some points, resembled that of Dante ; 
but he has treated it in a widely different manner. We can- 
not, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting our 
own great poet than by contrasting him with the father of 
Tuscan literature. 

The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the 
hieroglyphics of Egypt differ from the picture-writing of 
Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for them- 
selves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of 
Milton have a signification which is often discernible only 
to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they 



Milton. 17 

directly represent than on what they remotely suggest. 
However strange, however grotesque, may be the appear- 
ance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks 
from describing it. He gives us the shape, the color, the 
sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he 
measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a 
traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of 
Milton, they are introduced in a plain, business-like manner; 
not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which 
they are drawn ; not for the sake of any ornament which 
they may impart to the poem ; but simply in order to make 
the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to 
himself. The ruins of the precipice which led from the 
sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the 
rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. 
The cataract of Phlegetlion was like that of Aqua Cheta 
at the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the 
heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast 
cemetery of Aries. 

Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the 
dim imitations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. 
The English poet has never thought of taking the measure 
of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. 
In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, 
floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies 
of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes 
for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against 
the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas : his 
stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions 
the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre 
of Nimrod. " His face seemed to me as long and as broad 
as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome ; and his other limbs 
were in proportion ; so that the bank, which concealed him 
from the waist downward, nevertheless showed so much of 
him that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted 



18 Select Essays of 3Iacaulay. 

to reach to his hair." We are sensible that we do no jus- 
tice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. 
Gary's translation is not at hand ; and our version, however 
rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. 

We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of 
settling precedency between two such writers. Each in 
his own department is incomparable; and each, we may 
remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted 
to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. 
The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the 
eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He 
is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying 
out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters 
on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden 
his face from the terrors of the Gorgon. His own hands 
have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet 
have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow 
has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would 
throw aside such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it 
were told with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety 
even in its horrors, with the greatest precision and mul- 
tiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in this 
respect differs from that of Dante as the adventures of Ama- 
dis differ from those of Gulliver. The author of Amadis 
would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced 
those minute particulars which give such a charm to the 
work of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected deli- 
cacy about names, the official documents transcribed at full 
length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the 
court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. 
We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, 
nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we 
can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. 
But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Eother- 
hithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying islands, and 



Milton, 19 

philosophizing horses, nothing but such circumstantial 
touches could produce for a single moment a deception on 
the imagination. 

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other 
writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. 
They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked 
men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no 
tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. 
They have just enough in common with human nature to be 
intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like 
their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those 
of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions, and veiled 
in mysterious gloom. 

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have 
been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we 
would add that the poetry of these great men has in a con- 
siderable degree taken its character from their moral quali- 
ties. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their 
idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in 
common with those modern beggars for fame who extort a 
pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by 
exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it 
would be difficult to name two writers whose works have 
been more completely, though undesignedly, colored by their 
personal feelings. 

The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by 
loftiness of spirit ; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. 
In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity 
which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There 
is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly 
sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic 
caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can 
be judged, the effect of external circumstances. It was 
from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts 
of earth nor the hope of heaven, could dispel it. It turned 



20 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

every consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. 
It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense 
bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. 
His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, 
" a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light 
was as darkness." The gloom of his character discolors all 
the passions of men, and all the face of nature, and tinges 
with its own livid hue the flowers of paradise and the glories 
of the eternal throne. All the portraits of him are singu- 
larly characteristic. No person can loek on the features, 
noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, 
the haggard and woful stare of the eye, the sullen and con- 
temptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belong to 
a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy. 

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, 
like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in 
love. He had survived his health and his sight, the com- 
forts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. Of the 
great men by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance 
into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come ; 
some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable 
hatred of oppression ; some were pining in dungeons ; and 
some had jooured forth their blood on scaifolds. Venal and 
licentious scribblers were now the favorite writers of the 
sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome herd, which 
could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble 
of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, 
dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in 
obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, 
like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and 
serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, 
by the whole rout of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despond- 
ency and asperity could be excused in any man, they 
might have been excused in Milton. But the strength 
of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, 



Milton, 21 

nor gout, nor age, nor x^t^n^iT? ^^r domestic afflictions, 
nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, 
nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic 
patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but 
they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, 
perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings 
could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the 
eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the 
prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary dis- 
tinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes ; such it contin- 
ued to be when, after having experienced every calamity 
which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and 
disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. 

Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at 
a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are 
in general beginning to fade, even from those minds in 
which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappoint- 
ment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and delight- 
ful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither 
Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense 
of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to 
luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of night- 
ingales, the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of 
shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the 
voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry 
of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet 
affection of an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of 
the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful 
as fairy-land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic 
elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the 
verge of the avalanche. 

Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may 
be found in all his works ; but it is most strongly displayed 
in the Sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been under- 
valued by critics who have not understood their nature. 



22 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

They have no epigrammatic j)oiiit. There is none of the 
ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and 
brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple 
but majestic records of the feelings of the poet; as little 
tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been. 
A victory, an expected attack upon the City, a momentary 
fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out against one 
of his books, a dream which for a short time restored to 
him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed 
forever, led him to musings, which, without effort, shaped 
themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity 
of style which characterize these little pieces remind us of 
the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects 
of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres 
of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse. 

His public conduct was such as was to be expected from 
a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. 
He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history 
of mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between 
Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason and 
prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single gen- 
eration, for no single land. The destinies of the human 
race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the 
English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty 
principles which have since worked their way into the 
depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece 
from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, 
and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have 
kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, 
and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted 
fear. 

Of those principles, then struggling for their infant ex- 
istence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary 
champion. We need not say how much we admire his 
public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves 



Milton. 23 

that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjusti- 
fiable. The civil Avar, indeed, has been more discussed, and 
is less understood, than any event in English history. The 
friends of liberty labored under the disadvantage of which 
the lion in the fable complained so bitterly. Though they 
were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters. As 
a body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry 
and ruin literature ; and literature was even with them as, 
in the long run, it always is with its enemies. 

If it were possible that a people brought up under an in- 
tolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system 
without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to 
despotic power would be removed. We should, in that^' 
case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces/ 
no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character (/ 
of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany 
revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more 
assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The vio- 
lence of those outrages will always be proportioned to the 
ferocity and ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity and 
ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppres- 
sion and degradation under which they have been accus- 
tomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of 
the church and state reaped only that which they had 
sown. The government had prohibited free discussion ; it 
had done its best to keep the x^eople unacquainted with 
their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and 
natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it 
was because they had themselves taken away the key of 
knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was 
because they had exacted an equally blind submission. 

It is the character of such revolutions that we always 
see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some 
time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The 
natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates 



24 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly 
liberated people may be compared to a northern army 
encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that when 
soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to 
indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive lux- 
ury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, 
plenty teaches discretion ; and, after wine has been for a 
few months their daily fare, they become more temperate 
than they had ever been in their own country. In the same 
manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wis- 
dom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are 
often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on 
points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mys- 
terious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to 
exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half- 
finished edifice ; they point to the flying dust, the falling 
bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of 
the whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn where the 
promised splendor and comfort are to be found. If such 
miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be 
a good house or a good government in the world. 

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mys- 
terious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at 
certain seasons in the forui of a foul and poisonous snake. 
Those who injured her during the period of her disguise 
were forever excluded from participation in the blessings 
which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her 
loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterward 
revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which 
was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all 
their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them 
happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is 
Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. 
She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who 
in disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are 



Milton. 25 

those wlio, having dared to receive lier in her degraded and 
frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the 
time of her beauty and her glory ! 

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired 
freedom produces; and that cure is freedom. When a 
prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day ; 
he is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces. But 
the remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to 
accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth 
and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which 
have become half blind in the house of boiulage. But let 
them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a 
few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of 
opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. 
The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin 
to coalesce ; and at length a system of justice and order is 
educed out of the chaos. 

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it 
down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to 
be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim 
is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to 
go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are 
to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, 
they may indeed wait forever. 

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct 
of Milton and the otlier wise and good men who, in spite of 
much that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their 
associates, stood firmly by the cause of public liberty. 

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the 
public character of Milton apply to him only as one of a 
large body. We shall proceed to notice some of the pecu- 
liarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. 
And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short survey 
of the parties into which the political world was at that 
time divided. 



26 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

We would sj)eak first of the Puritans, the most remark- 
able body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever pro- 
duced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character 
lie on the surface. He that runs may read them ; nor have 
there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to 
point them out. For many years after the Restoration, 
they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. 
They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press 
and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage 
were most licentious. They were not men of letters ; they 
were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend them- 
selves ; and the public would not take them under its pro- 
tection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, 
to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The 
ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, 
their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, 
their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they 
introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human 
learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were in- 
deed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the 
laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be 
learned. And he who approaches this subject should care- 
fully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule 
which has already misled so many excellent writers. 

Those who roused the people to resistance ; who directed 
their measures through a long series of eventful years ; who 
formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest 
army that Europe had ever seen ; who trampled down king. 
Church, and aristocracy ; who, in the short intervals of 
domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England 
terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no 
vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere ex- 
ternal badges, like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses 
of friars. We regret that these badges were not more at- 
tractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and 



Milton. 27 

talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not 
the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adher- 
ents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for 
Avhich the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. 
But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in 
the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only 
the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain 
leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a 
peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior 
beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowl- 
edging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they 
habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great 
Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose in- 
spection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve 
him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of exist- 
ence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious hom- 
age which other sects substituted for the pure worship of 
the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 
Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full 
on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him 
face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terres- 
trial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and 
the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared 
with the boundless interval which separated the whole race 
from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 
They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, 
confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplish- 
ments and all the dignities of the world. If they were un- 
acquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they 
were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names 
were not found in the registers of heralds, they were re- 
corded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accom- 
panied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering 
angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses 



28 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

not made with hands ; their diadems crowns of glory which 
should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on 
nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt ; for 
they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, 
and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the 
right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of 
a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to 
whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged ; 
on whose slightest action the spirits of light and dark- 
ness looked with anxious interest ; who had been destined, 
before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity 
which should continue when heaven and earth should have 
passed aAvay. Events which short-sighted politicians as- 
cribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. 
For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. 
For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the 
pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had 
been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no 
common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no 
vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was 
for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had 
been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had 
shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. 

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, 
the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, 
the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He j^rostrated 
himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he set his foot 
on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he 
prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was 
half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard 
the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He 
caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke, screaming, 
from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought 
himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. 
Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that 



Milton. 29 

God had hidden his face from him. But when he took his 
seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem- 
pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace 
behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but 
their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but 
their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at 
them. But those had little reason to laugh who encoun- 
tered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. 
These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a cool- 
ness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which 
some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious 
zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. 
The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them 
tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had 
subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. 
Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They 
had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their 
sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm 
had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every 
vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them aljove the in- 
fluence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might 
lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose 
unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir 
Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and 
trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, 
but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, 
insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be 
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. 
Such we believe to have been the character of the Puri- 
tans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We 
dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We 
acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often in- 
jured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. 
Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, 
we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an 
honest, and a useful body. 



30 Select Essays of Macaulay, 

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly 
because it was the cause of religion. There was another 
party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning 
and ability, which acted with them on very different prin- 
ciples. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed 
to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology 
of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with 
regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of 
freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they 
set up their country as their idol, and proposed to them- 
selves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They 
seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of 
the French Pevolution. But it is not very easy to draw 
the line of distinction between them and their devout asso- 
ciates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it 
convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imper- 
cej^tibly adopted. 

We now come to the Eoyalists. We shall attempt to 
sj)eak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, 
with perfect candor. W^c shall not charge upon a whole 
party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gam- 
blers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder 
attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard 
of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses 
which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary 
armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favor- 
able specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the 
king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot 
refrain from looking with complacency on the character of 
the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in com- 
paring them with the instruments Avhich the despots of 
other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes 
who throng their antechambers, and the janizaries who 
mount guard at their gates. Our Royalist countrymen 
were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every 



Milton. 31 

step; and simpering at every word. They were not mere 
machines for destruction, dressed up in uniforms, caned 
into skill, intoxicated into valor, defending without love, 
destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their 
subserviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. The 
sentiment of individual independence was strong within 
them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish 
motive. Compassion and romantic honor, the prejudices of 
childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw over 
them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the Ked- 
cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle 
for an injured beauty, while they defended a false and 
loathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcely entered at all 
into the merits of the political question. It was not for a 
treacherous king or an intolerant Church that they fought, 
but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles 
over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which 
they had received the hands of their brides. Though noth- 
ing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, 
they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adver- 
saries, those qualities which are the grace of private life. 
With many of the vices of the E-ound Table, they had also 
many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tender- 
ness, and respect for women. They had far more both of 
profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their 
manners were more engaging, their tempers more ami- 
able, their tastes more elegant, and their households more 
cheerful. 

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which 
we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a 
freethinker. He was not a Eoyalist. In his character the 
noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmo- 
nious union. From the Parliament and from the court, 
from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the 
gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from 



32 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature 
selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, 
while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by 
which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, 
he lived 

" As ever in his great taskmaster's eye." 

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an 
Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he 
acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their 
fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But 
not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more 
perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, 
their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of 
science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny 
with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable 
and ornamental qualities which Avere almost entirely monop- 
olized by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had 
a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for 
every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of 
honor and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his 
tastes and his associations were such as harmonize best with 
monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of 
all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. 
But of those feelings he was the master, and not the slave. 
Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of 
fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the 
song of the Sirens ; yet he glided by without being seduced 
to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe ; but he 
bore about him a sure antidote against the effects of its 
bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his 
imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The 
statesman was proof against the splendor, the solemnity, 
and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person 
who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises 



Milton. 33 

on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture and music in the Penseroso, whicli was published 
about the same time, will understand our meaning. This 
is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, raises 
his character in our estimation, because it shows how many 
private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what 
he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very struggle 
of the noble Othello. His heart relents, but his hand is firm. 
He does naught in hate, but all in honor. He kisses the 
beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. 

That from which the public character of Milton derives 
its great and peculiar splendor still remains to be men- 
tioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king 
and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunc- 
tion with others. But the glory of the battle which he 
fought for the species of freedom which is the most valua- 
ble, and which was then the least understood, the freedom 
of the human mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of 
thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices 
against ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there were 
few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral 
and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result 
from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of 
private judgment. These were the objects which Milton 
justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous 
that the people should think for themselves as well as tax 
themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion 
of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew 
that those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these 
schemes of reform, and contented themselves with pulling 
down the king and imprisoning the raalignants, acted like 
the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in their eager- 
ness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the 
means of liberating the captive. They thought only of con- 
quering when they should have thought of disenchanting. 



34 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

" Oh, ye mistook ! Yc should have snatched his wand 
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady that sits here 
In stony fetters fixed and motionless." 

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break 
the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of en- 
chantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his 
public conduct was directed. For this he joined the Pres- 
byterians ; for this he forsook them. He fought their per- 
ilous battle ; but he turned away with disdain from their 
insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they 
had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He 
therefore joined the Independents, and called upon Crom- 
well to break the secular chain, and to save free conscience 
from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to 
the same great object, he attacked the licensing system, in 
that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as 
a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. 
His attacks were, in general, directed less against particular 
abuses than against those deeply seated errors on which 
almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of emi- 
nent men and the irrational dread of innovation. 

That he might shake the foundations of these debasing 
sentiments more effectually, he always selected for himself 
the boldest literary services. He never came up in the 
rear, when the outworks had been carried and the breach 
entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the begin- 
ning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy 
and eloquence against the bishops. But when his opinion 
seemed likely to prevail, he x^assed on to other subjects, 
and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers who now 
hastened to insult a falling party. Tliere is no more haz- 
ardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth 
into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has 



Milton. 35 

ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Mil- 
ton to penetrate the noisome vapors, and to brave the 
terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his 
opinions must respect the hardihood with which he main- 
tained them. He, in general, left to others the credit of 
expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious 
and political creed. He took his own stand upon those 
which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as 
criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce 
and regicide. He attacked the prevailng systems of educa- 
tion. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of 
the god of light and fertility. 

" Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui cpetera, vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evelior orbi." 

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton 
should, in our time, be so little read. As Gompositions, 
they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to 
become acquainted with the full power of the English lan- 
guage. They abound with passages compared with which 
the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. 
They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff 
with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books 
of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher 
than in those parts of his controversial works in which 
his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of 
devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own 
majestic language, " a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and 
harping symphonies." 

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear our- 
selves away from the subject. The days immediately fol- 
lowing the publication of this relic of Milton appear to be 
peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. And 
we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be 
found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may 



36 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

be the offering which we bring to it. While this book lies 
on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. 
We are transported a hundred and fifty years back. We 
can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small 
lodging ; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath 
the faded green hangings ; that we can catch the quick 
twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day ; that we 
are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud 
and mournful history of his glory and his affliction. We 
image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should 
listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with 
which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, 
the earnestness with which we should endeavor to console 
him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the 
neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, 
the eagerness with which we should contest with his daugh- 
ters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of 
reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal 
accents which flowed from his lips. 

These are perha23S foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be 
ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what w^e have 
written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. 
We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living 
or the dead ; and we think that there is no more certain 
indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that 
propensity which, for want of a better name, we will ven- 
ture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few charac- 
ters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest 
tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved 
pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have not 
been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by 
the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly 
stamped with the image and superscription of the Most 
High. These great men we trust that we know how to 
prize 5 and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, 



Milton. 37 

the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts 
resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin 
Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of para- 
dise to the earth, and which were distinguished from the 
productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and 
sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to 
heal. They are powerful, not only to delight but to elevate 
and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either 
the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot with- 
out aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with 
which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal 
with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude 
with which he endured every private calamity, the loftyj 
disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dan-1 
gers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, 
and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and 
with his fame. 



JOHN BUNYAN. 

(May, 1854.) 

John Bunyax, the most popular religious writer in the 
English language, was born at Elstow, about a mile from 
Bedford, in the year 1G28. He may be said to have been 
born a tinker. The tinkers then formed a hereditary caste, 
which was held in no high estimation. They were gener- 
ally vagrants and pilferers, and were often confounded with 
the gypsies, whom in truth they nearly resembled. Bun- 
yan's father was more respectable than most of the tribe. 
He had a fixed residence, and was able to send his son to a 
village school where reading and writing were taught. 

The years of John's boyhood were those during which 
the Puritan spirit was in the highest vigor all over Eng- 
land ; and nowhere had that spirit more influence than in 
Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad to 
whom nature had given a powerful imagination, and sensi- 
bility which amounted to a disease, should have been early 
haunted by religious terrors. Before he was ten, his sports 
were interrupted by fits of remorse and despair; and his 
sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly away 
with him. As he grew older, his mental conflicts became 
still more violent. The strong language in which he de- 
scribed them has strangely misled all his biographers 
except Mr. Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice 
with pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the 
supernatural power of divine grace to rescue the human 
soul from the lowest depths of wickedness. He is called in 
38 



John Bunyan. 39 

one book the most notorious of profligates ; in another, the 
brand plucked from the burning. He is designated in j\Ir. 
Ivimey's History of the Baptists as the depraved Bunyan, 
the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr. Ryland, a man once 
of great note among the Dissenters, breaks out into the 
following rhapsody : "ISTo man of common sense and com- 
mon integrity can deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, 
a worthless, contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God and 
goodness, a common profligate, a soul-despising, a soul- 
murdering, a soul-damning, thoughtless wretch as could 
exist on the face of the earth. Now, be astonished, 
heavens, to eternity ! and wonder, O earth and hell ! while 
time endures. r>ehold this very man become a miracle of 
mercy, a mirror of wisdom, goodness, holiness, truth, and 
love." But whoever takes the trouble to examine the evi- 
dence will find that the good men who wrote this had been 
deceived by a phraseology which, as they had been hearing 
it and using it all their lives, they ought to have understood 
better. There cannot be a greater mistake than to infer, 
from the strong expressions in which a devout man bemoans 
his e:»ceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than 
his neighbors. Many excellent persons, whose moral char- 
acter from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain 
discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autol)iog- 
raphies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless 
with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to 
Titus Gates or Mrs. Brownrigg. It is quite certain that 
Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most austerely 
Puritanical circles, would have been considered as a young 
man of singular gravity and innocence. Indeed, it may be 
remarked that he, like many other penitents who, in general 
terms, acknowledge themselves to have been the worst of 
mankind, fired up, and stood vigorously on his defense, 
whenever any particular charge was brought against him 
by others. He declares, it is true, that he had let loose 



40 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

the reins on the neck of his lusts, that he had delighted in 
all transgressions against the divine law, and that he had 
been the ringleader of the youth of Elstow in all manner of 
vice. But when those who wished him ill accused him of 
licentious amours, he called on God and the angels to attest 
his purity. Not only had he been strictly faithful to his 
wife, but he had, even before marriage, been perfectly spot- 
less. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from 
the railings of his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his 
life. One bad habit he contracted, that of using profane 
language ; but he tells us that a single reproof cured him 
so effectually that he never offended again. The worst that 
can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has 
been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of 
reprobates, as a village Rochester, is that he had a great 
liking for some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, 
but condemned by the rigid precisians among whom he 
lived, and for whose opinion he had a great respect. The 
four chief sins of which he was guilty were dancing, ring- 
ing the bells of the parish church, playing at tip-cat, and 
reading the History of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A 
rector of the school of Laud would have held such a young 
man up to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan's 
notions of good and evil had been learned in a very differ- 
ent school; and he was made miserable by the conflict 
between his tastes and his scruples. 

When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his 
life was interrupted by an event which gave a lasting color 
to his thoughts. He enlisted in the Parliamentary army, 
and served during the decisive campaign of 1645. All that 
we know of his military career is that, at the siege of Leices- 
ter, one of his comrades, who had taken his post, was killed 
by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered 
himself as having been saved from death by the special 
interference of Providence. It may be observed that his 



John Bunyan. 41 

imagination was strongly impressed by the glimpse which 
he had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to 
draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and for- 
tresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, and 
regiments arrayed, each under its own banner. His Great- 
heart, his Captain Boanerges, and his Captain Credence, are 
evidently portraits, of which the originals were among those 
martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's 
army. 

In a few months Bunyan returned home and married. 
His wife had some pious relations, and brought him as her 
only portion some pious books. And now his mind, excita- 
ble by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by education, 
and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious viru- 
lence of the enthusiasm which was then ejDidemic in Eng- 
land, began to be fearfully disordered. In outward things 
he soon became a strict Pharisee. He was constant in at- 
tendance at prayers and sermons. His favorite amusements 
were, one after another, relinquished, though not without 
many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tip-cat 
he paused, and stood staring wildly upward with his stick 
in his hand. He had heard a voice asking him whether he 
would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and 
go to hell ; and he had seen an awful countenance frowning 
on him from the sky. The odious vice of bell-ringing he 
renounced ; but he still for a time ventured to go to the 
church tower and look on while others pulled the ropes. 
But soon the thought struck him that, if he persisted in 
such wickedness, the steeple would fall on his head; and 
he fled in terror from the accursed place. To give u]3 danc- 
ing on the village green was still harder ; and some months 
elapsed before he had the fortitude to part with this darl- 
ing sin. When this last sacrifice had been made, he was, 
even when tried by the maxims of that austere time, fault- 
less. All Elstow talked of him as an eminently pious 



42 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than ever. 
Having nothing more to do in the way of visible reforma- 
tion, yet finding in religion no pleasures to supply the 
place of the juvenile amusements which he had relinquished, 
he began to apprehend that he lay under some special male- 
diction ; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies 
which seemed likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam. 

At one time he took it into his head that all persons of 
Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out that 
he partook of that blood ; but his hopes were speedily de- 
stroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition 
to be regarded as a Jew. 

At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange 
dilemma : " If I have not faith, I am lost ; if I have faith, 
I can work miracles." He was tempted to cry to the pud- 
dles between Elstow and Bedford, "Be ye dry," and to 
stake his eternal hopes on the event. 

Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bed- 
ford and the neighboring villages was passed ; that all who 
were to be saved in that part of England were already con- 
verted ; and that he had begun to pray and strive some 
months too late. 

Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were 
not in the right, and the Christians in the wrong. Then 
he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which prompted 
him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the parish bull. 
As yet, however, he was only entering the Valley of the 
Shadow of Deat>h. Soon the darkness grew thicker. Hid- 
eous forms floated before him. Sounds of cursing and wail- 
ing were in his ears. His way ran through stench and fire, 
close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be 
haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, 
and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most 
frightful of all the forms which his disease took was a pro- 
pensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his 



John Bunyan. 43 

share in the benefits of the redemption. Night and day, 
in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were 
repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him ! sell him ! " 
He strnck at the hobgoblins ; he pnshed them from him ; 
bnt still they were ever at his side. He cried out in answer 
to them, hour after hour, "Never, never; not for thousands 
of worlds ; not for thousands." At length, worn out by 
this long agony, he suffered the fatal words to escape him, 
" Let him go, if he will." Then his misery became more 
fearful than ever. He had done what could not be forgiven. 
He had forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, 
he had sold his birthright, and there was no longer any 
place for repentance. " None," he afterward wrote, ''knows 
the terrors of those days but myself." He has described 
his sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos. 
He envied the brutes ; he envied the very stones in the 
street, and the tiles on the houses. The sun seemed to 
withhold its light and warmth from him. His body, though 
cast in a sturdy mould, and though still in the highest vigor 
of youth, trembled whole days together with the fear of 
death and judgment. He fancied that this trembling was 
the sign set on the worst reprobates, the sign which God 
had put on Cain. The unhappy man's emotion destroyed 
his power of digestion. He had such pains that he ex- 
pected to burst asunder like Judas, whom he regarded as 
Jiis ])rototype. 

Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the advisers 
whom he consulted, were likely to do much good in a case 
like his. His small library had received a most unseason- 
able addition, the account of the lamentable end of Fran- 
cis Spira. One ancient man of high repute for piet^^, whom 
the sufferer consulted, gave an opinion which might well 
have produced fatal consequences. "I am afraid," said 
Bunyan, " that I have committed the sin against the Holy 
Ghost." '' Indeed," said the old fanatic, " I am afraid that 
you have." 



44 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

At length the clouds broke ; the light became clearer and 
clearer ; and the enthusiast, who had imagined that he was 
branded with the mark of the first murderer, and destined 
to the end of the arch traitor, enjoyed x^eace and a cheerful 
confidence in the mercy of God. Years elapsed, however, 
before his nerves, which had been so perilously overstrained, 
recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist society 
at Bedford, and was for the first time admitted to partake 
of the Eucharist, it was with difficulty that he could refrain 
from imprecating destruction on his brethren while the cup 
was passing from hand to hand. After he had been some 
time a member of the congregation he began to preach ; and 
his sermons produced a powerful effect. He was, indeed, 
illiterate ; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe 
training through which he had passed had given him such 
an experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious 
melancholy as he could never have gathered from books ; 
and his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of 
devotion, enabled him not only to exercise a great influence 
over the vulgar, but even to extort the half contemptuous 
admiration of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased 
to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter 
words of horrible impiety in the pulpit. 

Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in phys- 
ical diseases. It should seem that Bunyan was finally re- 
lieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered 
his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been 
five years a preacher when the Restoration put it in the 
power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over the 
country to oppress the Dissenters ; and, of all the Dissenters 
whose history is known to us, he was perhaps the most 
hardly treated. In November, 1660, he was flung into 
Bedford jail ; and there he remained, with some intervals 
of partial and precarious liberty, during twelve years. His 
persecutors tried to extort from him a promise that he 



John Bunyan. 45 

would abstain from preaching; but he was convinced that 
he was divinely set apart and commissioned to be a teacher 
of righteousness, and he was fully determined to obey God 
rather than man. He was brought before several tribunals, 
laughed at, caressed, reviled, menaced, but in vain. He 
was facetiously told that he was quite right in thinking 
that he ought not to hide his gift ; but that his real gift 
was skill in repairing old kettles. He was compared to 
Alexander the coppersmith. He was told that, if he would 
give up preaching, he should be instantly liberated. He 
was warned that, if he persisted in disobeying the law, he 
would be liable to banishment ; and that if he were found 
in England after a certain time, his neck would be stretched. 
His answer was, " If you let me out to-day, I will preach 
again to-morrow." Year after year he lay patiently in a 
dungeon, compared with which the worst prison now to be 
found in the island is a palace. His fortitude is the more 
extraordinary because his domestic feelings were unusually 
strong. Indeed, he was considered by his stern brethren 
as somewhat too fond and indulgent a parent. He had 
several small children, and among them a daughter who 
was blind, and whom he loved with peculiar tenderness. 
He could not, he said, bear even to let the wind blow on 
her; and now she must suffer cold and hunger, she must 
beg, she must be beaten; "yet," he added, "I must, I 
must do it." While he lay in prison, he could do nothing 
in the way of his old trade for the support of his family. 
He determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He 
learned to make long tagged thread laces ; and many thou- 
sands of these articles were furnished by him to the hawkers. 
While his hands were thus busied, he had other employment 
for his mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction to 
his fellow captives, and formed from among them a little 
flock, of which he was himself the pastor. He studied 
indefatigably the few books which he possessed. His two 



46 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

chief companions were the Bible and Fox's Book of Mar- 
tyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might 
have been called a living concordance ; and on the margin 
of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible the ill 
spelt lines of doggerel in which he expressed his reverence 
for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity to the 
mystical Babylon. 

At length he began to write, and though it was some time 
before he discovered where his strength lay, his writings 
were not unsuccessful. They were coarse, indeed, but they 
showed a keen mother-wit, a great command of the homely 
mother-tongue, an intimate knowledge of the English Bible, 
and a vast and dearly bought spiritual experience. They 
therefore, when the corrector of the press had improved the 
syntax and the spelling, were well received by the humbler 
class of Dissenters. 

Much of Bunj^an's time was spent in controversy. He 
wrote sharply against the Quakers, whom he seems always 
to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, however, a remark- 
able fact that he adopted one of their peculiar fashions : 
his practice was to write, not November or December, but 
eleventh month and twelfth month. 

He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. 
No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the 
form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he said 
with much point, who have most of the spirit of prayer are 
all to be found in jail ; and those who have most zeal for 
the form of prayer are all to be found at the ale-house. 
The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised 
and defended. 

Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of the 
sect to which he belonged. He doubtless held with perfect 
sincerity the distinguishing tenet of that sect, but he did 
not consider that tenet as one of high importance, and will- 
ingly joined in communion with pious Presbyterians and 



Jolin Bunyan. 47 

Independents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly pro- 
nounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which 
long survived the original combatants. In our own time 
the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and 
rhetoric was pleaded by Robert Hall with an ingenuity and 
eloquence such as no polemical writer has ever surpassed. 

During the years which immediately followed the Eesto- 
ration, Bunyan's confinement seems to have been strict ; but 
as the passions of IGGO cooled, as the hatred with which the 
Puritans had been regarded while their reign was recent 
gave place to pity, he was less and less harshly treated. 
The distress of his family, and his own patience, courage, 
and piety, softened the hearts of his persecutors. Like his 
own Christian in the cage, he found protectors even among 
the crowd of Vanity Fair. The bishop of the diocese, Dr. 
Barlow, is said to have interceded for him. At length the 
prisoner was suffered to pass most of his time beyond the 
walls of the jail, on condition, as it should seem, that he 
remained within the town of Bedford. 

He owed his complete liberation to one of the worst acts 
of one of the worst governments that England lias ever 
seen. In 1671 the Cabal was in power. Charles II. had 
concluded the treaty by which he bound himself to' set up 
the Roman Catholic religion in England. The first step 
which he took toward that end was to annul, by an uncon- 
stitutional exercise of his prerogative, all the penal statutes 
against the Roman Catholics ; and in order to disguise his 
real design, he annulled at the same time the penal statutes 
against Protestant non-conformists. Bunyan was conse- 
quently set at large. In the first warmth of his gratitude, 
he published a tract in which he compared Charles to that 
humane and generous Persian king who, though not him- 
self blessed with the light of the true religion, favored the 
chosen people, and permitted them, after years of captivity, 
to rebuild their beloved temple. To candid men, who con- 



48 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

sicler how miich Bunyan had suffered, and how little he 
could guess the secret designs of the court, the unsuspicious 
thankfulness with which he accepted the precious boon of 
freedom will not appear to require any apology. 

Before he left his prison he had begun the book which 
has made his name immortal. The history of that book is 
remarkable. The author was, as he tells us, writing a treat- 
ise, in which he had occasion to speak of the stages of the 
Christian progress. He compared that progress, as many 
others had compared it, to a pilgrimage. Soon his quick 
wit discovered innumerable points of similarity which had 
escaped his predecessors. Images came crowding on his 
mind faster than he could put them into words : quagmires 
and j)its, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft vales, 
sunny pastures; a gloomy castle, of which the court-yard 
was strewn with the skulls and bones of murdered prison- 
ers ; a town all bustle and splendor, like London on the 
Lord Mayor's Day ; and the narrow path, straight as a rule 
could make it, running on uphill and downhill, through 
city and through wilderness, to the Black Eiver and the 
Shining Gate. He had found out, as most people would 
have said, by accident, as he would doubtless have said, by 
the guidance of Providence, where his powers lay. He 
had no suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a master- 
piece. He could not guess what place his allegory would 
occupy in English literature, for of English literature he 
knew nothing. Those who suppose him to have studied 
the Fairy Queen might easily be confuted, if this were the 
proper place for a detailed examination of the passages 
in which the two allegories have been thought to resemble 
each other. The only work of fiction, in all probability, 
with which he could compare his pilgrim, was his old favor- 
ite, the legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would 
have thought it a sin to borrow any time from the serious 
business of his life, from his expositions, his controversies, 



John Bunyan. 49 

and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with 
what he considered merely as a trifle. It was only, he 
assures us, at spare moments that he returned to the House 
Beautiful, the Delectable Mountains, and the Enchanted 
Ground. He had no assistance. Nobody but himself saw 
a line till the whole was complete. He then consulted his 
pious friends. Some were pleased. Others were much 
scandalized. It was a vain story, a mere romance about 
giants, and lions, and goblins, and warriors, sometimes 
figliting with monsters, and sometimes regaled by fair ladies 
in stately palaces. The loose, atheistical wits at Will's 
might write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the 
court ; but did it become a minister of the Gospel to copy 
the evil fashions of the world ? There had been a time 
when the cant of such fools would have made Bunyan mis- 
erable. But that time was passed, and his mind was now 
in a firm and healthy state. He saw that, in employing 
fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was 
only following the example which every Christian ought to 
propose to himself ; and he determined to print. 

The Pilgrim's Progress stole silently into the world. 
Not a single copy of the first edition is known to be in 
existence. The year of publication has not been ascer- 
tained. It is probable that, during some months, the little 
volume circulated only among poor and obscure sectaries. 
But soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified 
the imagination of the reader with all the action and 
scenery of a fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity by 
setting him to discover a multitude of curious analogies, 
which interested his feelings for human beings, frail like 
himself, and struggling with temptations from within and 
from without, which every moment drew a smile from him 
by some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and never- 
theless left on his mind a sentiment of reverence for God 
and of sympathy for man, began to produce its effect. In 



50 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

Puritanical circles, from which plays and novels were 
strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of 
genius, though it were superior to the Iliad, to Don 
Quixote, or to Othello, can ever produce on a mind 
accustomed to indulge in literary luxury. In 1G78 came 
forth a second edition, with additions; and then the de- 
mand became immense. In the four following years the 
book was reprinted six times. The eighth edition, which 
contains the last improvements made by the author, was 
published in 1G82, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. 
The help of the engraver had early been called in; and 
tens of thousands of children looked with terror and de- 
light on execrable copperplates, which represented Chris- 
tian thrusting his sword into Apollyon or writliing in 
the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland and in some 
of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than 
in his native country. Bunyan has told us, Avith very 
pardonable vanity, that in New England his Dream was 
the daily subject of the conversation of thousands, and was 
thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding. He 
had numerous admirers in Holland and among the Hugue- 
nots of; Prance. With the pleasure, however, he experi- 
enced some of the pains of eminence. Knavish booksellers 
put forth volumes of trash under his name, and envious 
scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor 
ignorant tinker should really be the author of the book 
which was called his. 

He took the best way to confound both those who coun- 
terfeited him and those who slandered him. He continued 
to work the gold-field which he had discovered, and to 
draw from it new treasures, not, indeed, with quite such 
ease and in quite such abundance as when the .precious soil 
was still virgin, but yet with success which left all com- 
petition far behind. In 1684 appeared the second part of 
the Pilgrim's Progress. It was soon followed by the Holy 



John Bunyan. 51 

War, which, if the Pilgrim's Progress did not exist, woukl 
be the best allegory that ever was written. 

Bunyan's place in society was now very different from 
what it had been. There had been a time when many Dis- 
senting ministers, who could talk Latin and read Greek, had 
affected to treat him with scorn. Bat his fame and influ- 
ence now far exceeded theirs. He had so great an author- 
ity among the Baptists that he was popularly called Bishop 
Bunyan. His episcopal visitations were annual. From 
Bedford he rode every year to London, and preached there 
to large and attentive congrega,tions. From London he 
went his circuit through the country, animating the zeal of 
his brethren, collecting and distributing alms, and making 
up quarrels. The magistrates seem in general to have 
given him little trouble. But there is reason to believe 
that in the year 1685 he was in some danger of again 
occupying his old quarters in Bedford jail. In that year 
the rash and wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the Gov- 
ernment a pretext for prosecuting the Non-conformists ; 
and scarcely one eminent divine of the Presbyterian, In- 
dependent, or Baptist persuasion remained unmolested. 
Baxter was in prison ; Howe was driven into exile ; Henry 
was arrested. Two eminent Baptists, with whom Bunyan 
had been engaged in controversy, were in great peril and 
distress. Danvers was in danger of being hanged ; and 
Kifhn's grandsons were actually hanged. The tradition is 
that, during those evil days, Bunyan was forced to disguise 
himself as a wagoner, and that he preached to his congre- 
gation at Bedford in a smock-frock, with a cart-whip in his 
hand. But soon a great change took place. James the 
Second was at open war with the Church, and found it 
necessary to court the Dissenters. Some of the creatures 
of the Government tried to secure the aid of Bunyan. 
They probably knew that he had written in praise of the 
indulgence of 1672, and therefore hoped tliat he might be 



52 Select Essays of Macaulay. >^^ 

equally pleased with the indulgence of 1687. But fifteen 
years of thought, observation, and commerce with the 
world had made him wiser. Nor were the cases exactly 
parallel. Charles was a professed Protestant ; James was a 
professed Papist. The object of Charles's indulgence was 
disguised ; the object of James's indulgence was patent. 
Bunyan was not deceived. He exhorted his hearers to 
prepare themselves by fasting and prayer for the danger 
which menanced their civil and religious liberties, and 
refused even to speak to the courtier who came down 
to remodel the corporation of Bedford, and who, as was 
supposed, had it in charge to offer some municipal dignity 
to the Bishop of the Baptists. 

Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. In the sum- 
mer of 1688 he undertook to plead the cause of a son with 
an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old man not 
to disinherit the young one. This good work cost the 
benevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride through 
heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings on Snow 
Hill, was seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days. 
He was buried in Bunhill Fields ; and the spot where he 
lies is still regarded by the Non-conformists with a feeling 
which seems scarcely in harmony with the stern spirit of 
their theology. Many Puritans, to whom the respect paid 
by Roman Catholics to the relics and tombs of saints seemed 
childish or sinful, are said to have begged with their dying 
breath that their coffins might be placed as near as possible 
to the coffin of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress. 

The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the cen- 
tury which followed his death, was indeed great, but was 
almost entirely confined to religious families of the middle 
and lower classes. Very seldom was he during that time 
mentioned with respect by any writer of great literary emi- 
nence. Young coupled his prose with the poetry of the 
wretched D'Urfey. In the Spiritual Quixote, the adven- 



Joli7i Bunyan. 53 

tures of Christian are ranked with those of Jack the Giant- 
killer and John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise 
the great allegorist, but did not venture to name him. It 
is a significant circumstance that, till a recent period, all 
the numerous editions of the Pilgrim's Progess were evi- 
dently meant for the cottage and the servants' hall. The 
paper, the printing, the plates, were all of the meanest 
description. In general, when the educated minority and 
the common people differ about the merit of a book, the 
opinion of the educated minority finally prevails. The 
Pilgrim's Progress is perhaps the only book about which, 
after the lapse of a hundred years, the educated minority 
has come over to the opinion of the common people. 

The attempts which have been made to improve and to 
imitate this book are not to be numbered. It has been done 
into verse: it has been done into modern English. The 
"Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience," the "Pilgrimage of 
Good Intent," the "Pilgrimage of Seek Truth," the "Pil- 
grimage of Theophilus," the ''Infant Pilgrim," the "Hindoo 
Pilgrim," are among the many feeble copies of the great 
original. But the peculiar glory of Bunyan is that those 
who most hated his doctrines have tried to borrow the help 
of his genius. A Catholic version of his parable may be 
seen with the head of the Virgin in the title-page. On the 
other hand, those Antinomians for whom his Calvinism is 
not strong enough, may study the pilgrimage of Hephzibah, 
in which nothing will be found which can be construed into 
an admission of free agency and universal redemption. But 
the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandalism by 
which a fine work of art was ever defaced was committed 
so late as the year 1853. It was determined to transform 
the Pilgrim's Progress into a Tractarian book. The task 
was not easy ; for it was necessary to make the two sacra- 
ments the most prominent objects in the allegory ; and of 
all Christian theologians, avowed Quakers excepted, Bunyan 



54 Select Essays of Macaiday. 

was the one in whose system the sacraments held the least 
prominent place. However, the Wicket Gate became a type 
of baptism, and the House Beautiful of the Eucharist. The 
effect of this change is such as assuredly the ingenious per- 
son who made it never contemplated ; for, as not a single 
pilgrim passes through the Wicket Gate in infancy, and as 
Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful without stopping, 
the lesson which the fable, in its altered shape, teaches, is 
that none but adults ought to be baptized, and that the 
Eucharist may safely be neglected. Nobody would have 
discovered from the original Pilgrim's Progress that the 
author was not a Peedobaptist. To turn his book into a 
book against Psedobaptism was an achievement reserved for 
an Anglo-Catholic divine. Such blunders must necessarily 
be committed by every man who mutilates parts of a great 
work, without taking a comprehensive view of the whole. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

(December, 1856.) 

Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent English 
writers of the eighteenth century, was the son of Michael 
Johnson, who was, at the beginning of that century, a 
magistrate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note in 
the Midland Counties. Michael's abilities and attainments 
seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquainted 
with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, 
that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire 
thought him an oracle on points of learning. Between him 
and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and 
political sympathy. He was a zealous Churchman, and, 
though he qualified himself for municipal office by taking 
the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a 
Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house which is still 
pointed out to every traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel 
was born on the 18th of September, 1709. In the child the 
physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities which after- 
ward distinguished the man were plainly discernible ; great 
muscular strength, accompanied by much awkwardness and 
many infirmities ; great quickness of parts, with a morbid 
propensity to sloth and procrastination ; a kind and generous 
heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had in- 
herited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was 
beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents 
were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a 
specific for this malady. In his third year he was taken up 

55 



56 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by 
the court chaplains, and stroked and presented with a piece 
of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest recollections 
was that of a stately lady in a diamond stomacher and a 
long black hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The 
boy's features, which were originally noble and not irregular, 
were distorted by his malady. His cheeks were deeply 
scarred. He lost for a time the sight of one eye, and he 
saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of 
his mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, 
he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapidity that at 
every school to which he was sent he was soon the best 
scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and 
was left to his own devices. He learned much at this time, 
though his studies were without guidance and without plan. 
He ransacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude 
of books, read what was interesting, and passed over what 
was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no 
useful knowledge in such a way ; but much that was dull to 
ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read little 
Greek; for his proficiency in that language was not such 
that he could take much pleasure in the masters of Attic 
poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good 
Latinist, and he soon acquired, in the large and miscella- 
neous library of which he now had the command, an 
extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan 
delicacy of taste, which is the boast of the great public 
schools of England, he never possessed. But he was early 
familiar with some classical writers who were quite un- 
known to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton. He 
was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great restorers 
of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he 
found a huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The name 
excited his curiosity, and he eagerly devoured hundreds of 
pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his own 



Samuel Jolinson. 57 

Latin compositions show that he had paid at least as much 
attention to modern copies from the antique as to the 
original models. 

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his 
family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael 
Johnson was much better qualified to pore over books, and 
to talk about them, than to trade in them. His business 
declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that 
the daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was 
out of his power to support his son at either university; 
but a wealthy neighbor offered assistance, and, in reliance 
on promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel 
was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the 
young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, 
they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and 
eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and 
curious information which he had picked up during many 
months of desultory, but not unprofitable, study. On the 
first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by 
quoting Macrobius ; and one of the most learned among 
them declared that he had never known a freshman of 
equal attainments. 

At Oxford Johnson resided during about three years. 
He was poor, even to raggedness ; and his appearance 
excited a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to 
his haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of 
Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of 
that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. 
Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door, but he 
spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not ser- 
vile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman 
commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated 
the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The 
needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of 
Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a 



68 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and 
dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed 
ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the 
college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, how- 
ever, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and ac- 
quirements. He had early made himself known by turning 
Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, 
indeed, were not exactly Virgilian, but the translation found 
many admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope him- 
self. 

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the 
ordinary course of things, have become a Bachelor of Arts : 
but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of 
support on which he had relied had not been kept. His 
family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford 
tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. 
In the autumn of 1731 he was under the necessity of quit- 
ting the university without a degree. In the following 
winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance, 
and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to 
the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel 
succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds. 

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one 
hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle 
needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the suffer- 
ings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the 
young man left the university, his hereditary malady had 
broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become 
an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he 
had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; 
and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often 
been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and 
for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his 
mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified 
people who did not know him. At a dinner-table he would. 



Samuel Johnson. 59 

in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. 
He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a 
clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unin- 
telligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great 
circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his 
heart on touching every post in the streets through which 
he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would 
go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under 
the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly 
torpid and his imagination morbidly active. At one time 
he would stand poring on the town clock without being able 
to tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear his 
mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name. 
But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took 
possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of 
human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness 
as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or 
drown themselves ; but he was under no temptation to com- 
mit suicide. He was sick of life, but he was afraid of 
death; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which 
reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found 
but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of de- 
jection, for his religion partook of his own character. The 
light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct 
line, or with its own pure splendor. The rays had to 
struggle through a disturbing medium ; they reached him 
refracted, dulled, and discolored by the thick gloom which 
had settled on his soul; and, though they might be suf- 
ficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him. 

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this cele- 
brated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way 
through the world. He remained during about five years 
in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and 
his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired 
others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay 



60 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there. 
Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of 
the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and 
knowledge of the world, did himself honor by patronizing 
the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished 
manners, and squalid garb moved many of the petty aris- 
tocracy of the neighborhood to laughter or to disgust. At 
Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a 
livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in 
Leicestershire ; he resided as a humble companion in the 
house of a country gentleman ; but a life of dependence 
was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to 
Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary 
drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little 
noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book 
about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publish- 
ing by subscription the x^oems of Politian, with notes con- 
taining a history of modern Latin verse ; but subscriptions 
did not come in, and the volume never appeared. 

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson 
fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth 
Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordi- 
nary spectators, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse 
woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colors, 
and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which 
were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. 
To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose 
eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural 
bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same 
room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he called 
her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished of 
her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned cannot be 
doubted, for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, 
with a readiness which did her little honor, the addresses 
of a suitor who might have been her son. The marriage. 



Samuel Johnson. 61 

however, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved happier 
than might have been expected. The lover continued to be 
under the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady died in 
her sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an in- 
scription, extolling the charms of her person and of her 
manners ; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion 
to mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludi- 
crous, half pathetic, "Pretty creature!" 

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself 
more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a 
house in the neighborhood of his native town, and adver- 
tised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and 
only three pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appear- 
ance was so strange, and his temper so violent, that his 
school-room must have resembled an ogre's den. Nor was 
the tawdry painted grandmother whom he called his Titty 
well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young 
gentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, 
used, many years later, to throw the best company of Lon- 
don into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endear- 
ments of this extraordinary pair. 

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, 
determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a literary 
adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of 
the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters 
of introduction from his friend Walmesley. 

Never since literature became a calling in England had it 
been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson 
took up his residence in London. In the preceding genera- 
tion a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently 
rewarded by the Government. The least that he could 
expect was a pension or a sinecure place ; and, if he showed 
any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a Member of 
Parliament, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, a secre- 
tary of state. It would be easy, on the other hand, to 



62 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

name several writers of the nineteenth century of whom 
the least successful has received forty thousand pounds 
from the booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation 
in the most dreary part of the dreary interval which sepa- 
rated two ages of prosperity. Literature had ceased to 
flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not begun 
to flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of 
letters, indeed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was 
then considered as a handsome fortune, and lived on a foot- 
ing of equality with nobles and ministers of State. But 
this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose repu- 
tation was established, and whose works were popular, such 
an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in every library, 
such an author as Fielding, whose Pasquin had had a greater 
run than any drama since The Beggar's Opera, was some- 
times glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means 
of dining on tripe at a cook-shop under ground, where he 
could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a 
Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what 
humiliations and privations must have awaited the novice 
who had still to earn a name. One of the publishers to 
whom Johnson applied for employment measured with a 
scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and ex- 
claimed, "You had better get a porter's knot, and carry 
trunks." Nor was the advice bad, for a porter was likely 
to be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet. 
- Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was 
able to form any literary connection from which he could 
expect more than bread for the day which was passing over 
him. He never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, 
Avho was now residing in London, relieved his wants during 
this time of trial. " Harry Hervey," said the old philoso- 
pher many years later, " was a vicious man ; but he was 
very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love 
him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed 



Samuel Johnson. 63 

feasts which were made more agreeable by contrast. But 
in general he dined, and thought that he dined well, on six- 
pennyworth of meat and a pennyworth of bread at an ale- 
house near Drury Lane. 

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he en- 
dured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper 
and his deportment. His manners had never been courtly ; 
they now became almost savage. Being frequently under the 
necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became 
a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat 
down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with raven- 
ous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the 
tables of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects 
wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed 
in subterranean ordinaries and alamode beef-shops, was far 
from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have 
near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie 
made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such vio- 
lence that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out 
on his forehead. The affronts which his poverty embold- 
ened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would 
have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him 
rude even to ferocity. Unhappily, the insolence which, 
while it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some sense 
respectable, accompanied him into societies where he was 
treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly pro- 
voked into striking those who had taken liberties with him. 
All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain 
from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most 
rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed every- 
where that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow 
whom he had hired to puff the Harleian Library. 

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in Lon- 
don, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular employment 
from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who 



64 Select Ussays of Maeaulay. 

was proprietor and editor of The Gentleman's Magazine, w 
That journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long 
existence, was the only periodical work in the kingdom 
which then had what would now be called a large circula- 
tion. It was, indeed, the chief source of parliamentary 
intelligence. It was not then safe, even during a recess, to 
publish an account of the proceedings of either House with- 
out some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain 
his readers with what he called " Reports of the Debates 
of the Senate of Lilliput." France was Blefusca ; London 
was Mildendo ; pounds were sprugs ; the Duke of New- 
castle was the Nardac Secretary of State ; Lord Hardwicke 
was the Hurgo Hickrad ; and William Pulteney was Wingul 
Pulnub. To write the speeches was, during several years, 
the business of Johnson. He was generally furnished with 
notes, meagre indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been said ; 
but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence both 
for the ministry and for the opposition. He was himself a 
Tory, not from rational conviction — for his serious opinion 
was that one form of government was just as good or as bad 
as another — but from mere passion, such as inflamed the 
Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman 
circus against the G-reens. In his infancy he had heard so 
much talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers 
of the Church, that he had become a furious partisan when 
he could scarcely speak. Before he was three, he had in- 
sisted on being taken to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield 
cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much 
respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as any 
Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which 
had been begun in the nursery had been completed by the 
university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the 
most Jacobitical place in England, and Pembroke was one 
of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices 
which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd than 



Samuel Johnson. 65 

those of his own Tom Tempest. Charles the Second and 
James the Second were two of the best kings that ever 
reigned. Land, a poor creature who never did, said, or wrote 
anything indicating more than the ordinary capacity of an 
old woman, was a prodigy of parts and learning, over whose 
tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden 
deserved no more honorable name than that of " the zealot 
of rebellion." Even the ship-money, condemned not less 
decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest 
Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to have been an 
unconstitutional impost. Under a government the mildest 
that had ever been known in the world — under a govern- 
ment which allowed to the people an unprecedented liberty 
of speech and action — he fancied that he was a slave ; he 
assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and 
regretted the lost freedom and happiness of those golden 
days in which a writer who had taken but one-tenth part of 
the license allowed to him would have been pilloried, man- 
gled with the shears, whipped at the cart's-tail, and flung 
into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and 
stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parlia- 
ments and Continental connections. He long had an aver- 
sion to the Scotch, an aversion of which he could not 
remember the commencement, but which, he owned, had 
probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the 
nation during the Great Eebellion. It is easy to guess in 
what manner debates on great party questions were likely 
to be reported by a man whose judgment was so much dis- 
ordered by party spirit. A show of fairness was indeed 
necessary to the prosperity of the magazine ; but Johnson 
long afterward owned that, though he had saved appear- 
ances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs should not 
have the best of it ; and, in fact, every passage which has 
lived, every passage which bears the marks of his higher 
faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of the 
opposition. 



66 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

A few. weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure 
labors, he published a work which at once placed him high 
among the writers of his age. It is probable that what he 
had suffered during his first year in London had often 
reminded him of some parts of that noble pOem in which 
Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a 
needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in 
the tottering garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. 
Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's satires and epistles 
had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by 
many readers thought superior to the originals. What 
Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juve- 
nal. The enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For be- 
tween Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common, 
much more, certainly, than between Pope and Horace. 

Johnson's "London" appeared, without his name, in May, 
1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and 
vigorous poem ; but the sale was rapid and the success com- 
plete. A second edition was required within a week. Those 
small critics who are always desirous to lower established 
reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous 
satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar depart- 
ment of literature. It ought to be remembered, to the 
honor of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with 
which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He 
made inquiries about the author of London. Such a man, 
he said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon 
discovered ; and Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself 
to obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a 
grammar school for the poor young poet. The attempt 
failed, and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack. 

It does not appear that these two men, the most emi- 
nent writer of the generation which was going out, and the 
most eminent writer of the generation which was coming in, 
ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles, 



Samuel Johnso7i. 67 

one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving 
pamphleteers and index-makers. Among Johnson's asso- 
ciates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his 
shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in 
bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket ; who 
composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, 
and who was at last run over by a hackney-coach when he 
was drunk : Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, 
instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geomet- 
rical diagrams on the board where he sat cross-legged : and 
the penitent impostor George Psalmanazar, who, after por- 
ing all day, in a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish 
rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night with 
literary and theological conversation at an ale-house in the 
City. But the most remarkable of 'the persons with whom 
at this time Johnson consorted was Richard Savage, an 
earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, who had seen life in 
all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribbons in St. 
James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds' weight of 
irons on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This 
man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last 
into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. 
His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by 
the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 
and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their 
advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison 
and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to 
borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, he 
appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken 
meat, and lay down to rest under the piazza of Covent 
Garden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as 
he could get to the furnace of a glass-house. Yet, in his 
misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He had an 
inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and brilliant 
world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed 



68 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxa- 
tion, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask 
of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with 
laughter and tell stories not over-decent. During some 
months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson ; 
and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson 
remained in London to drudge for Cave ; Savage went to 
the West of England, lived there as he had lived every- 
where, and, in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, in 
Bristol jail. 

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was 
strongly excited about his extraordinary character and his 
not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared, 
widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men 
which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub 
Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety ; 
and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin ele- 
ment of our language. But the little work, with all its 
faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary 
biography existed in any language, living or dead ; and a 
discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the 
author was destined to be the founder of a new school of 
English eloquence. 

The Life of Savage was anonymous ; but it was well 
known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. 
During the three years which followed, he produced no 
important work ; but he was not, and indeed could not be, 
idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued to 
grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and 
genius ; and the praise of Warburton was then no light 
thing. Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747, several 
eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous 
work of preparing a Dictionary of the English Language, 
in two folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay 
him was only fifteen hundred guineas ; and out of this sum 



Sa77iuel Johnson. 69 

he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted him 
in the humbler parts of his task. 

The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the 
Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated 
for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, 
and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be 
the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently 
governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, with emi- 
nent firmness, wisdom, and humanity, and he had since be- 
come Secretary of State. He received Johnson's homage 
with the most winning affability, and requited it with a few 
guineas, bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but 
was by no means desirous to see all his carpets blackened 
with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to 
right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waist- 
coats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, 
who gave strange starts and uttered strange growls, who 
dressed like a scarecrow and ate like a cormorant. During 
some time Johnson continued to call on his patron, but, after 
being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was 
not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself 
at the inhospitable door. 

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have com- 
pleted his Dictionary by the end of 1750 ; but it was not 
till 1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the 
world. During the seven years which he passed in the 
drudgery of penning definitions and marking quotations for 
transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary labor of a 
more agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of 
Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of the tenth satire 
of Juvenal. It is, in truth, not easy to say whether the 
palm belongs to the ancient or to the modern poet. The 
couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is described, though 
lofty and sonorous, are feeble when compared with the 
wonderful lines which bring before us all Eome in tumult 



70 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels on the door- 
posts, the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, the stat- 
ues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of the 
disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook 
through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcass before 
it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in 
the concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made 
the most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short 
of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the other hand, 
Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles ; and 
Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries 
of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's 
lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero. 

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes John- 
son received only fifteen guineas. 

A few days after the publication of this poem, his trag- 
edy, begun many years before, was brought on the stage. 
His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appear- 
ance on a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once 
risen to the first place among actors, and was now, after 
several years of almost uninterrupted success, manager of 
Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between him and his 
old preceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelled 
each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. 
Nature had made them of very different clay, and circum- 
stances had fully brought out the natural peculiarities of 
both. Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's head. Con- 
tinued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson 
saw with more envy than became so great a man the villa, 
the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet which the little 
mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticula- 
tions, what wiser men had written ; and the exquisitely 
sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that, 
while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he 
could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was 



Samuel Johnson. 71 

impossible to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidu- 
lated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so many 
early recollections in common, and sympathized with each 
other on so many points on which they sympathized with 
nobody else in the vast population of the capital, that, 
though the master was often provoked by the monkey-like 
impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish 
rudeness of the master, they remained friends till they 
were parted by death. Garrick now brought Irene out, 
with alterations sufficient to displease the author, yet not 
sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience. The 
public, however, listened with little emotion, but with much 
civility, to live acts of monotonous declamation. After 
nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed, 
altogether un suited to the stage, and, even when perused in 
the closet, Avill be found hardly worthy of the author. He 
had not the slightest notion of what blank verse should be. 
A change in the last syllable of every other line would 
make the versification of the Vanity of Human Wishes 
closely resemble the versification of Irene. The poet, 
however, cleared, by his benefit nights, and by the sale of 
the copyright of his tragedy, about three hundred pounds, 
then a great sum in his estimation. 

About a year after the representation of Irene, he began 
to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners, 
and literature. This species of composition had been 
brought into fashion by the success of The Tatler, and by 
the still more brilliant success of The Spectator. A crowd 
of small writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison. 
The Lay Monastery, The Censor, The Freethinker, The Plain 
Dealer, The Champion, and other works of the same kind, 
had had their short day.^ None of them had obtained a 
permanent place in our literature ; and they are now to 
be found only in the libraries of the curious. At length 
Johnson undertook the adventure in which so many aspir- 



72 Select Essays of Macaiday. 

ants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the appear- 
ance of the last number of The Spectator appeared the first 
number of The Rambler. From March 1750 to March 
1752, this paper continued to come out every Tuesday and 
Saturday. 

From the first. The Eambler was enthusiastically admired 
by a few eminent men. Kichardson, when only five num- 
bers had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not superior, to 
The Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed their appro- 
bation not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose 
many faults indifference to the claims of genius and learn- 
ing cannot be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the 
writer. In consequence, probably, of the good offices of 
Dodington, who was then the confidential adviser of Prince 
Frederic, two of his royal highness's gentlemen carried a 
gracious message to the printing-office, and ordered seven 
copies for Leicester House. But these overtures seem to 
have been very coldly received. Johnson had had enough 
of the patronage of the great to last him all his life, and 
was not disposed to haunt any other door as he had haunted 
the door of Chesterfield. 

By the public The Eambler was at first very coldly re- 
ceived. Though the price of a number was only twopence, 
the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits were 
therefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves 
were collected and reprinted, they became popular. The 
author lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over 
England alone. Separate editions were published for the 
Scotch and Irish markets. A large party pronounced the 
style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in some essays it 
would be impossible for the writer himself to alter a single 
word for the better. Another party, not less numerous, 
vehemently accused him of having corrupted the purity of 
the English tongue. The best critics admitted that his dic- 
tion was too monotonous, too obviously artificial, and now 



Samuel Johnson. 73 

and then turgid even to absurdity. But they did justice to 
the acuteness of his observations on morals and manners, 
to the constant precision and frequent brilliancy of his lan- 
guage, to the weighty and magnificent eloquence of many 
serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleasing humor of 
some of the lighter papers. On the question of precedence 
between Addison and Johnson, a question which, seventy 
years ago, was much disputed, posterity has pronounced a 
decision from which there is no appeal. Sir Roger, his 
chaplain and his butler. Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, 
the Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, the 
Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves of Hilpah 
and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit to the 
Abbey, are known to everybody. But many men and 
women, even of highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted 
with Squire Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venus- 
tulus, the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of 
the Revolutions of a Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait 
and A jut. 

The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy hour. 
Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physicians. 
Three days later she died. She left her husband almost 
broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a 
man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, 
and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose 
of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities 
which she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his 
affection had been concentrated on her. He had neither 
brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she 
was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. 
Her opinion of his writings was more important to him 
than the voice of the pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the 
judgment of the Monthly Review. The chief support which 
had sustained him through the most arduous labor of his 
life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the 



74 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

profit which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was 
gone ; and in that vast labyrinth of streets, peopled by 
eight hundred thousand human beings, he was alone. Yet 
it was necessary for him to set himself, as he expressed it, 
doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the 
Dictionary was at length complete. 

It had been generally supposed that this great work 
would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished noble- 
man to whom the prospectus had been addressed. He well 
knew the value of such a compliment ; and therefore, when 
the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself to 
soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of deli- 
cate and judicious kindness, the j)i*itle which he had so 
cruelly wounded. Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear, 
the town had been entertained by a journal called The 
World, to which many men of high rank and fashion con- 
tributed. In two successive numbers of The World, the 
Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase, puffed with 
wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly 
praised. It was proposed that he should be invested with 
the authority of a dictator, nay, of a pope, over our lan- 
guage, and that his decisions about the meaning and the 
spelling of words should be received as final. His two 
folios, it was said, would of course be bought by everybody 
who could afford to buy them. It was soon known that 
these papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just 
resentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a 
letter written with singular energy and dignity of thought 
and language, he repelled the tardy advances of his patron. 
The Dictionary came forth without a dedication. In the 
preface the author truly declared that he owed nothing to 
the great, and described the difficulties with which he had 
been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the 
ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, 
Home Tooke, never could read that passage without tears. 



Samuel Johnson. 75 

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, 
and something more than justice. The best lexicographer 
may well be content if his productions are received by the 
world with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was 
hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever 
excited. It was indeed the first dictionary which could be 
read with pleasure. The definitions show so much acute- 
ness of thought and command of language, and the passages 
quoted from poets, divines, and philosophers are so skilfully 
selected, that a leisure hour may always be very agreeably 
spent in turning over the pages. The faults of the book 
resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault. 
Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He knew little or 
nothing of any Teutonic language except English, which 
indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic language; 
and thus he was absolutely at the merc}^ of Junius and 
Skinner. 

The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added 
nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred 
guineas which the booksellers had agreed to i^ay him had 
been advanced and spent before the last sheets issued 
from the press. It is painful to relate that, twice in the 
course of the year which followed the publication of this 
great work, he was arrested and carried to spunging-houses, 
and that he was twice indebted for his liberty to his excel- 
lent friend Eichardson. It was still necessary for the man 
who had been formally saluted by the highest authority as 
dictator of the English language to supply his wants by 
constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He proposed 
to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription, and 
many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their 
money; but he soon found the task so little to his taste 
that he turned to more attractive employments. He con- 
tributed many papers to a new monthly journal, which was 
called the Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have 



76 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

much interest; but among them was the very best thing 
that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of 
satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns's Inquiry into the 
Nature and Origin of Evil. 

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a 
series of essays, entitled The Idler. During two years these 
essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly 
read, widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently pirated 
while they were still in the original form, and had a large 
sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may be de- 
scribed as a second part of The Rambler, somewhat livelier 
and somewhat weaker than the first part. 

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, 
who had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. 
It was long since he had seen her ; but he had not failed to 
contribute largely out of his small means to her comfort. 
In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay 
some debts which she had left, he wrote a little book in a 
single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without 
reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for 
the copyright; and the purchasers had great cause to be 
pleased with their bargain ; for the book was Rasselas. 

The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies 
as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously disap- 
pointed when they found that the new volume from the 
circulating library was little more than a dissertation on 
the author's favorite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes ; 
that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and 
the Princess without a lover; and that the story set the 
hero and the heroine down exactly where it had taken them 
up. The style was the subject of much eager controversy. 
The Monthly Review and the Critical Review took different 
sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous 
pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables where 
it was possible to use a word of six, and who could not 



Samuel Jolmsoii, 77 

make a waiting-woman relate her adventures without bal- 
ancing every noun with another noun, and every epithet 
with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, cited 
with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning 
was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendor. 
And both the censure and the praise were merited. 

About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics ; 
and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite severe 
criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare 
for neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for 
ascribing to one age or nation the manners and opinions 
of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way 
more grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Ne- 
kayah and Pekuah, are evidently meant to be Abyssinians 
of the eighteenth century ; for the Europe which Imlac 
describes is the Europe of the eighteenth century ; and the 
inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of 
gravitation which Newton discovered, and which was not 
fully received even at Cambridge till the eighteenth cen- 
tury. What a real company of Abyssinians would have 
been may be learned from Bruce's Travels. But Johnson, 
not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their 
letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, 
into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as him- 
self or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accom- 
plished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the 
whole domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a land 
of harems, a land of polygamy, a land where women are 
married without ever being seen, he introduced the flirta- 
tions and jealousies of our ballrooms. In a land where 
there is boundless liberty of divorce, wedlock is described 
as the indissoluble compact. "A youth and maiden meet- 
ing by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange 
glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of each 
other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process of 



78 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

marriage." Such it may have been, and may still be, in 
London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was 
guilty of such improprieties had little right to blame the 
poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented 
Julio Komano as flourishing in the days of the oracle of 
Delphi. 

By such exertions as have been described, Johnson sup- 
ported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great 
change in his circumstances took place. He had from a 
child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite 
prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in 
his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and 
elaborate Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste 
and judgment, inserted bitter and contumelious reflections 
on the Whig party. The excise, which was a favorite 
resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as a hateful 
tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excise in 
language so coarse that they had seriously thought of prose- 
cuting him. He had with difficulty been prevented from 
holding up the Lord Privy Seal by name as an example of 
the meaning of the word '^ renegade." A pension he had 
defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his coun- 
try ; a pensioner, as a slave of state hired by a stipend to 
obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these 
definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a 
time of wonders. George the Third had ascended the 
throne ; and had, in the course of a few months, disgusted 
many of the old friends and conciliated many of the old 
enemies of his house. The city was becoming mutinous. 
Oxford was becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks 
were murmuring. Somersets and Wyndhams were hasten- 
ing to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was now Lord 
Bute, who was a tory, and could have no objection to 
Johnson's toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron 
of men of letters ; and Johnson was one of the most emi- 



Samuel Johnson. 79 

nent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. 
A pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, 
and with very little hesitation accepted. 

This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way 
of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer 
felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was 
at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to 
indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in 
the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning, 
without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's 
officer. 

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to per- 
form. He had received large subscriptions for his promised 
edition of Shakspeare ; he had lived on those subscriptions 
during some years ; and he could not without disgrace omit 
to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly 
exhorted him to make an effort, and he repeatedly resolved 
to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his 
resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and 
nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idle- 
ness ; he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, 
that he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; 
but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacra- 
ment. His private notes at this time are made uj) of self- 
reproaches. ^'My indolence," he wrote on Easter-eve in 
1764, " has sunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of 
strange oblivion has overspread me, so that I know not 
what has become of the last year." Easter 1765 came, 
and found him still in the same state. "My time," he 
wrote, "has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream 
that has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, 
and I know not hoAv the days pass over me." Happily for 
his honor, the charm which held him captive was at length 
broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak 
enough to pa.y serious attention to a story about a ghost 



80 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone 
himself, with some of his friends, at one in the morning, to 
St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a 
communication from the perturbed spirit. But the spirit, 
though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately 
silent ; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven 
had been amusing herself by making fools of so many phi- 
losophers. Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk 
with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking 
for some man of established fame and Tory politics to in- 
sult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nick- 
named Johnson "Pomposo," asked where the book was 
which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, 
and directly accused the great moralist of cheating. This 
terrible word proved effectual; and in October 1765 ap- 
peared, after a delay of nine years, the new edition of 
Shakspeare. 

This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, 
but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. 
The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not 
in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in 
which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he 
had during many years observed human life and human 
nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of 
Polonius. ISTothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm 
Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. But here 
praise must end. It would be difficult to name a more 
slovenly, a more worthless, edition of any great classic. 
The reader may turn over play after play without finding 
one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and sat- 
isfactory explanation of a passage which had baffled pre- 
ceding commentators. Johnson had, in his Prospectus, told 
the world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which 
he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been 
under the necessity of taking a wider view of the English 



Samuel Johnson. 81 

language than any of his predecessors. That his knowl- 
edge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, 
unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part 
of our literature with which it is especially desirable that 
an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dan- 
gerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by 
the assertion that in the two folio volumes of the English 
Dictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any 
dramatist of the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare and 
Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson 
might easily, in a few months, have made himself well ac- 
quainted with every old play that was extant. But it never 
seems to have occurred to him that this was a necessary 
preparation for the work which he had undertaken. He 
would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height 
of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works 
of iEschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sopho- 
cles. Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare 
without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, 
read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, 
Marlowe, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy 
and scurrilous. Those who most loved and honored him 
had little to say in praise of the manner in which he had 
discharged the duty of a commentator. He had, however, 
acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain heavy on 
his conscience, and he sunk back into the repose from which 
the sting of satire had roused him. He long continued to 
live upon the fame which he had already won. He was 
honored by the University of Oxford with a doctor's degree, 
by the Eoyal Academy with a professorshij3, and by the 
king with an interview, in which his majesty most gra- 
ciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would 
not cease to write. In the interval, however, between 1765 
and 1775 Johnson published only two or three political 
tracts, the longest of which he could have produced in 



82 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked on the 
Life of Savage and on E-asselas. 

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. 
The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 
those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole 
literary world, was altogether without a parallel. His col- 
loquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He had 
strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humor, immense 
knowledge of literature and of life, and an infinite store of 
curious anecdotes. As respected style, he spoke far better 
than he wrote. Every sentence which dropped from his 
lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely balanced 
period of The Rambler. But in his talk there were no pom- 
pous triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words 
in osity and ation. All was simplicity, ease, and vigor. He 
uttered his short, weighty, and pointed sentences with a 
power of voice, and a justness and energy of emphasis, of 
which the effect was rather increased than diminished by 
the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings 
and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally 
ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to 
sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or 
entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of 
learning, of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible 
that it might have been printed without the alteration of a 
word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as 
he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was 
ready to bestow the overflowings of his full mind on any- 
body who would start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a 
stage-coach, or on the person who sat at the same table with 
him in an eating-house. But his conversation was nowhere 
so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a 
few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as 
he once expressed it, to send him back every ball that he 
threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves into a 



Samuel Johnso7i. 83 

club, which gradually became a formidable power in the 
commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this 
conclave on new books were speedily known over all Lon- 
don, and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, 
or to condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker 
and the pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when 
we consider what great and various talents and acquire- 
ments met in the little fraternity. Goldsmith was the rep- 
resentative of poetry and light literature, Keynolds of the 
arts, Burke of political eloquence and political philosophy. 
There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones, 
the greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to the 
meeting his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable 
mimicry, and his consummate knowledge of stage effect. 
Among the most constant attendants were two high-born 
and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friend- 
ship, but of widely different characters and habits ; Bennet 
Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek literature, by 
the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of his 
life ; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his 
knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his sar- 
castic wit. To predominate over such a society was not 
easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated. 
Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which 
others were under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, 
though not generally a very patient listener, was content to 
take the second part when Johnson was present ; and the 
club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to this 
day popularly designated as Johnson's Club. 

Among the members of this celebrated body was one to 
whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who 
was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had 
not without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This 
was James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an hon- 
orable name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and 



84 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious 
to all who were acquainted with him. That he could not 
reason, that he had no Avit, no humor, no eloquence, is 
apparent from his writings. And yet his writings are read 
beyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and 
are likely to be read as long as the English exists, either as 
a living or as a dead language. Nature had made him a 
slave and an idolater. His mind resembled those creepers 
Avhich the botanists call parasites, and which can subsist 
only by clinging round the stems and imbibing the juices of 
stronger plants. He must have fastened himself on some- 
body. He might have fastened himself on Wilkes, and have 
become the fiercest x^atriot in the Bill of Rights Society. 
He might have fastened himself on Whitefield, and have 
become the loudest field-preacher among the Calvinistic 
Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself on 
Johnson. The pair might seem ill-matched ; for Johnson 
had early been prejudiced against Bos well's country. To a 
man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable tem- 
per, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have 
been as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson 
hated to be questioned ; and Boswell was eternally catechis- 
ing him on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded 
such questions as, " What would you do, sir, if you were 
locked up in a tower with a baby? " Johnson was a water- 
drinker, and Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little 
better than an habitual sot. It was impossible that there 
should be perfect harmony between two such companions. 
Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked into fits of 
passion, in which he said things that the small man, during 
a few hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, 
was soon made up. During twenty years the disciple con- 
tinued to worship the master : the master continued to scold 
the disciple, to sneer at him, and to love him. The two 
friends ordinarily resided at a great distance from each 



Samuel Jolmson. 85 

other. Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edin- 
burgh, and could pay only occasional visits to London. Dur- 
ing those visits his chief business was to watch Johnson, to 
discover all Johnson's habits, to turn the conversation to 
subjects about which Johnson was likely to say something 
remarkable, and to fill quarto note-books with minutes of 
what Johnson had said. In this way were gathered the 
materials out of which was afterward constructed the most 
interesting biographical work in the world. 

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a 
connection less important indeed to his fame, but much 
more important to his happiness, than his connection with 
Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers 
in the kingdom, a man of sound and cultivated understand- 
ing, rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married to one 
of those clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert, young 
women, who are perpetually doing or saying what is not 
exactly right, but who, do or say what they may, are always 
agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became acquainted with 
Johnson, and the acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. 
They were astonished and delighted by the brilliancy of his 
conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man 
so widely celebrated preferred their house to any other in 
London. Even the peculiarities which seemed to unfit 
him for civilized society, his gesticulations, his rollings, 
his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way in which he 
put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with which he 
devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of anger, 
his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased the 
interest which his new associates took in him. For these 
things M^ere the cruel marks left behind by a life which had 
been one long conflict with disease and with adversity. In 
a vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only 
disgust. But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue, their 
effect was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson 



86 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

soon had an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a 
still more pleasant apartment at the villa of his friends on 
Streatham Common. A large part of every year he passed 
in those abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnifi- 
cent and luxurious indeed, when compared -with the dens in 
which he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleas- 
ures were derived from what the astronomer of his Abys- 
sinian tale called "the endearing elegance of female 
friendship." Mrs. Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed 
him, and, if she sometimes provoked him b}'" her flippancy, 
made ample amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic 
sweetness of temper. When he was diseased in body and 
in mind, she was the most tender of nurses. No comfort 
that wealth could purchase, no contrivance that womanly 
ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, could devise, 
was wanting to his sick-room. He requited her kindness 
by an affection pure as the affection of a father, yet deli- 
cately tinged with a gallantry which, though awkward, 
must have been more flattering than the attentions of a 
crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, 
of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of 
Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed under 
the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family some- 
times to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton ; once to Wales, 
and once to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in 
one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet 
Street. In the garrets was his library, a large and miscel- 
laneous collection of books, falling to pieces and begrimed 
with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, 
regaled a friend with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of 
lamb and spinach, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwell- 
ing uninhabited during his long absences. It was the home 
of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever 
was brought together. At the head of the establishment 
Johnson had placed an old lady named Williams, whose 



Samuel Johnson. 87 

chief recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. 
But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an 
asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. 
Desmoulins, whose family he had known many years before 
in Staffordshire. Koom was found for the daughter of Mrs. 
Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was 
generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her gen- 
erous host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, 
who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, 
and received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses 
of gin, and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange 
menagerie. All these poor creatures were at constant war 
with each other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. 
Sometimes, indeed, they transferred their hostilities from 
the servant to the master, complained that a better table 
was not kept for them, and railed or maundered till their 
benefactor was glad to make his escape to Streatham, or to 
the Mitre tavern. And yet he, w^ho was generally the 
haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too 
prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the 
part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful 
patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his 
bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, insults more 
provoking than those for which he had knocked down 
Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after 
year Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, 
continued to torment him and to live upon him. 

The course of life which has been described was inter- 
rupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important 
event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and 
had been much interested by learning that there was so 
near him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude 
and simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become 
intimately acquainted with a state of society so utterly 
unlike all that he had ever seen frequently crossed his 



88 Select Essays of Macaulaij. 

mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would have 
overcome his habitual sluggishness, and his love of the 
smoke, the mud, and the cries of London, had not Bos well 
importuned him to attempt the adventure, and offered to be 
his squire. At length, in August 1773, Johnson crossed 
the Highland line, and plunged courageously into what was 
then considered, by most Englishmen, as a dreary and 
perilous wilderness. After wandering about two months 
through the Celtic region, sometimes in rude boats which 
did not protect him from the rain, and sometimes on small 
shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, he re- 
turned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images 
and new theories. During the following year he employed 
himself in recording his adventures. About the beginning 
of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was published, and 
was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation 
in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature. 
The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is en- 
tertaining; the speculations, whether sound or unsound, are 
always ingenious ; and the style, though too stiff and pom- 
pous, is somewhat easier and more graceful than that of his 
early writings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at 
length become little more than matter of jest ; and what- 
ever remained of the old feeling had been effectually re- 
moved by the kind and respectful hospitality with which 
he had been received in every part of Scotland. It was, of 
course, not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should 
praise the Presbyterian polity and ritual, or that an eye 
accustomed to the hedge-rows and parks of England should 
not be struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and East 
Lothian. But even in censure Johnson's tone is not un- 
friendly. The most enlightened Scotchmen, with Lord 
Mansfield at their head, were well pleased. But some 
foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were moved to anger by 
a little unpalatable truth which was mingled with much 



Samuel Johnson. 89 

eulogy, and assailed him whom they chose to consider as 
the enemy of their country with libels much more dishonor- 
able to their country than anything that he had ever said 
or written. They published paragraphs in the newspapers, 
articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five-shilling 
books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being blear-eyed 5 
another for being a pensioner; a third informed the world 
that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted of felony 
in Scotland, and had found that there was in that country 
one tree capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman. 
Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the Jour- 
ney to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take ven- 
geance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was that 
Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most con- 
temptuous terms, and walked about, during some time, with 
a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wise to 
encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him, to 
borrow the sublime language of his oWn epic poem, "like a 
hammer on the red son of the furnace." 

Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He 
had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy ; and 
he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which is 
the more extraordinary because he was, both intellectually 
and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are 
made. In conversation he was a singularly eager, acute, 
and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good 
reasons, he had recourse to sophistry ; and when heated by 
altercation, he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invec- 
tive. But when he took his pen in his hand, his whole 
character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers 
misrepresented him and reviled him ; but not one of the 
hundred could boast of having been thought by him worthy 
of a refutation, or even of a retort. The Kenricks, Camp- 
bells, MacNicols, and Hendersons did their best to annoy 
him, in the hope that he would give them importance by 



90 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

answering them. But the reader will in vain search his 
works for any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell, to Mac- 
Nicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on vindicating 
the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a 
detestable Latin hexameter : 

" Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." 

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had 
learned, both from his own observation and from literary 
history, in which he was deeply read, that the place of 
books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is 
written about them, but by what is written in them ; and 
that an author whose works are likely to live is very un- 
wise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works 
are certain to die. He always maintained that fame was 
a shuttlecock, which could be kept up only by being beaten 
back, as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall 
if there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener 
in his mouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no 
man w^as ever written down but by himself. 

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the 
Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his 
envious assailants could have done, and, to a certain extent, 
succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between 
England and her American colonies had reached a point at 
which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was 
evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought 
that the eloquence of Johnson might, with advantage, be 
employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here, 
and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had 
already written two or three tracts in defense of the for- 
eign and domestic policy of the Government; and those 
tracts, though hardly worthy of him, were much superior 
to the crowd of pamphlets which lay on the counters of 
Almou and Stockdale. But his Taxation No Tyranny 



Samuel Johnson, 91 

was a pitiable failure. The very title was a silly phrase 
which can have been recommended to his choice by nothing 
but a jingling alliteration which he ought to have despised. 
The arguments were such as boys uge in debating societies. 
The pleasantr}^ was as awkward as the gambols of a hippo- 
potamus. Even Boswell was forced to own that in this 
unfortunate piece he could detect no trace of his master's 
powers. The general opinion was that the strong faculties 
which had produced the Dictionary and The Rambler 
were beginning to feel the effect of time and of disease, 
and that the old man would best consult his credit by 
writing no more. 

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not 
because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote 
Rasselas in the evenings of a week, but because he had 
foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a sub- 
ject such as he would at no time have been competent 
to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never will- 
ingly read or thought or talked about affairs of State. He 
loved biography, literary history, the history of manners ; 
but political history was positively distasteful to him. The 
question at issue between the colonies and the mother- 
country was a question about which he had really nothing 
to say. He failed, therefore, as the greatest men must fail 
when they attempt to do that for which they are unfit ; as 
Burke would have failed if Burke had tried to write come- 
dies like those of Sheridan ; as Reynolds would have failed 
if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes like those of Wil- 
son. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving 
most signally that his failure was not to be ascribed to 
intellectual decay. 

On Easter-eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting 
which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in London, 
called upon him. Though he had some scruples about 
doino' business at that season, he received his visitors with 



92 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition 
of the English poets, from Cowley downward, was in contem- 
plation, and to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. 
He readily undertook tke task, a task for which be w^as pre- 
eminently qualified. His knowledge of the literary history of 
•England since the Kestoration was unrivalled. That knowl- 
edge he had derived partly from books and partly from sources 
which had long been closed ; from old Grub Street traditions ; 
from the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers who 
had long been lying in parish vaults ; from the recollections 
of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with 
the wits of Button ; Gibber, who had mutilated the plays 
of two generations of dramatists ; Orrery, who had been 
admitted to the society of Swift ; and Savage, who had ren- 
dered services of no very honorable kind to Pope. The 
biographer, therefore, sat down to his task with a mind full 
of matter. He had at first intended to give only a para- 
graph to every minor poet, and only four or five pages to 
the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism 
overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was 
originally meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled 
into ten volumes, small volumes, it is true, and not closely 
printed. The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six 
in 1781. 

The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of 
Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as 
any novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are 
eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often 
excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, 
well deserve to be studied ; for, however erroneous they 
may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of a 
mind trammelled by prejudice and deficient in sensibility, 
but vigorous and acute. They therefore generally contain 
a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be separated 
from the alloy ; and, at the very worst, they mean some- 



Samuel Johnson. 93 

thing, a praise to which much of what is called criticism in 
our time has no pretensions. 

Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared 
in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the 
other lives, will be struck by the difference of style. Since 
Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances, he had writ- 
ten little and had talked much. When, therefore, he, after 
the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which 
he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of elab- 
orate composition was less preceptible than formerly ; and 
his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had 
formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned by 
a skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the 
Lives of the Poets is so obvious that it cannot escape the 
notice of the most careless reader. 

Among the Lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, 
Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all doubt, 
that of Gray. 

This great work at once became popular. There was, 
indeed, much just and much unjust censure ; but even those 
who were loudest in blame were attracted by the book in 
spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains of the 
publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer 
was very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write 
very short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred 
guineas. The booksellers, when they saw how far his per- 
formance had surpassed his promise, added only another 
hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not despise, or 
affect to despise, money, and though his strong sense and 
long experience ought to have qualified him to protect his 
own interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful and 
unlucky in his literary bargains. He was generally reputed 
the first English writer of his time. Yet several writers of 
his time sold their copyrights for sums such as he never ven- 
tured to ask. To give a single instance, Kobertson received 



94 Select Essays of Macaulay, 

four thousand five hundred pounds for the History of 
Charles the Fifth ; and it is no disrespect to the memory 
of Robertson to say that the History of Charles the Fifth 
is both a less valuable and a less amusing book than the 
Lives of the Poets. 

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infir- 
mities of age were coming fast upon him. That inevitable 
event, of which he never thought without horror, was 
brought near to him, and his whole life was darkened by 
the shadow of death. He had often to pay the cruel price 
of longevity. Every year he lost what could never be 
replaced. The strange dependents to whom he had given 
shelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he was strongly 
attached by habit, dropped oft' one by one; and, in the 
silence of his home, he regretted even the noise of their 
scolding-matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no 
more 5 and it would have been well if his wife had been laid 
beside him. But she survived to be the laughing-stock of 
those who had envied her, and to draw from the eyes of the 
old man who had loved her beyond anything in the world 
tears far more bitter than he would have shed over her 
grave. With some estimable and many agreeable qualities, 
she was not made to be independent. The control of a mind 
more steadfast than her own was necessary to her respecta- 
bility. While she was restrained by her husband, a man of 
sense and firmness, indulgent to her taste in trifles, but 
always the undisputed master of his house, her worst 
offences had been impertinent jokes, white lies, and short 
fits of pettishness ending in sunny good-humor. But he 
was gone ; and she was left an opulent widow of forty, with 
strong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. 
She soon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in 
whom nobody but herself could discover anything to admire. 
Her pride, and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard 
against this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated 



Samuel Johnson. 95 

her nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered 
her health. Conscious that her choice was one which John- 
son could not approve, she became desirous to escape from 
his inspection. Her manner toward him changed. She was 
sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did not con- 
ceal her joy when he left Streatham : she never pressed him 
to return ; and if he came unbidden, she received him in a 
manner which convinced him that he was no longer a wel- 
come guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she 
gave. He read, for the last time, a chapter of the Greek 
Testament in the library which had been formed by himself. 
In a solemn and tender prayer he commended the house and 
its inmates to the Divine protection, and, with emotions 
which choked his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, 
left forever that beloved home for the gloomy and desolate 
house behind Fleet Street, where the few and evil days 
which still remained to him were to run out. Here, in June, 
1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, he 
recovered, and which does not appear to have at all impaired 
his intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick 
upon him. His asthma tormented him day and night. 
Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. While sinking 
under a complication of diseases, he heard that the woman 
whose friendship had been the chief happiness of sixteen 
years of his life had married an Italian fiddler ; that all Lon- 
don was crying shame upon her; and that the newspapers 
and magazines were filled with allusions to the Ephesian 
matron and the two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently 
said that he would try to forget her existence. He never 
uttered her name. Every memorial of her which met his 
eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the 
laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen 
to a land where she was unknown, hastened across Mont 
Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry Christmas of con- 
certs and lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man 



96 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

with whose name hers is inseparably associated had ceased 
to exist. 

He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily afflic- 
tion, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described in 
that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series of his 
Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew 
near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath 
more easily in a Southern climate, and would probably 
have set out for Rome and Naples but for his fear of the 
expense of the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the 
means of defraying ; for he had laid up about two thousand 
pounds, the fruit of labors which had made the fortune of 
several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon 
this hoard, and he seems to have wished even to keep its 
existence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that the 
Government might be induced to increase his pension to 
six hundred pounds a year, but this hope was disappointed, 
and he resolved to stand one English winter more. This 
winter was his last. His legs grew weaker; his breath 
grew shorter; the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of 
incisions which he, courageous against pain, but timid 
against death, urged his surgeons to make deeper and 
deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated his 
sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham was 
withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians 
and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from 
him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. AVind- 
ham sat much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, and 
sent his own servant to watch at night by the bed. Frances 
Burney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly 
kindness, stood weeping at the door ; while Langton, whose 
piety eminently qualified him to* be an adviser and com- 
forter at such a time, received the last pressure of his 
friend's hand within. When at length the moment, dreaded 
through so many years, came close, the dark cloud passed | 



Samuel Johnson. 97 

away from Johnson's mind. His temper became unusually 
patient and gentle ; he ceased to think with terror of death, 
and of that which lies beyond death ; and he spoke much 
of the mercy of God, and of the propitiation of Christ. In 
this serene frame of mind he died on the 13th of December, 
1784. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey, 
among the eminent men of whom he had been the historian, 
— Cowley and Denham, Dry den and Congreve, Gay, Prior, 
and Addison. 

Since his death the popularity of his works — the Lives 
of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
excepted — has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has 
been altered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. 
An allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily 
apprehended in literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas 
has grown somewhat dim. But though the celebrity of the 
writings may have declined, the celebrity of the writer, 
strange to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book has done 
for him more than the best of his own books could do. The 
memory of other authors is kept alive by their works. But 
the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. 
The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat 
with the metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at 
wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his 
lingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his 
tea in oceans. No human being who has been more than 
seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And 
it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with 
what he would himself have called the anfractuosities of 
his intellect and of his temper, serves only to strengthen 
our conviction that he was both a great and a good man. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

(February, 1856.) 

Oliver Goldsmith was one of the most pleasing English 
writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a Protestant 
and Saxon family which had been long settled in Ireland, 
and which had, like most other Protestant and Saxon fami- 
lies, been, in troubled times, harassed and put in fear by 
the native population. His father, Charles Goldsmith, 
studied, in the reign of Queen Anne, at the diocesan school 
of Elphin, became attached to the daughter of the school- 
master, married her, took orders, and settled at a place 
called Pallas, in the county of Longford. There he with 
difficulty supported his wife and children on what he could 
earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. 

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November 1728. 
That spot was then, for all practical purposes, almost as 
remote from the busy and splendid capital in which his 
later years were passed, as any clearing in Upper Canada 
or any sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even at this day 
those enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the 
birthplace of the j^oet are forced to perform the latter part 
of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from any 
high-road, on a dreary plain which, in wet weather, is often 
a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting-car to pieces ; 
and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most 
strongly built wheels cannot be dragged. 

When Oliver was still a child, his father was presented 
to a living, worth about two hundred pounds a year, in 



Oliver Goldsmith. 99 

the county of Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted 
their cottage in the wilderness for a spacious house on a 
frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boy 
was taught his letters by a maid-servant, and was sent, in 
his seventh year, to a village school kept by an old quarter- 
master on half-pay, who professed to teach nothing but 
reading, writing, and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaust- 
ible fund of stories about ghosts, banshees, and fairies, 
about the great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and 
galloping Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough 
and Stanhope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious 
disaster of Brihuega./ This man must have been of the 
Protestant religion ; but he was of the aboriginal race, and 
not only spok6 the Irish language, but could pour forth 
unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and 
through life continued to be, a passionate admirer of the 
Irish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, 
some of the last notes of whose harp he heard. It ought to 
be added that Oliver, though by birth one of the Englishry, 
and though connected by numerous ties with the Estab- 
lished Church, never showed the least sign of that con- 
temptuous antipathy with which, in his days, the ruling 
minority in Ireland too generally regarded the subject 
majority. So far, indeed, was he from sharing in the opin- 
ions and feelings of the caste to which he belonged, that 
he conceived an aversion to the Glorious and Immortal 
Memory, and, even when George the Third was on the 
throne, maintained that nothing but the restoration of the 
banished dynasty could save the country. 

From the humble academy kept by the old soldier Gold- 
smith was removed in his ninth year. He went to several 
grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of the 
ancient languages. His life at this time seems to have 
been far from happy. He had, as appears from the admira- 
ble portrait of him at Knowle, features harsh even to ugli- 



100 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

ness. The small-pox had set its mark on him with more 
than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs 
ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to 
personal defects ; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's 
appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a 
disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He 
became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed 
at as a fright in the playground, and flogged as a dunce 
in the sclioolroom. When he had risen to eminence, those 
who once derided him ransacked their memory for the 
events of his early years, and recited repartees and couplets 
which had dropped from him, and which, though little 
noticed at the time, were supposed, a quarter of a century 
later, to indicate the powers which produced the Vicar of 
Wakefield and the Deserted Village. 

In his seventeenth year Oliver we^nt up to Trinity College, 
Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food and 
tuition, and very little for lodging; but they had to per- 
form some menial services from which they have long 
been relieved. They swept the court ; they carried up the 
dinner to the fellows' table, and changed the plates and 
poured out the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith 
was quartered, not alone, in a garret, on the window of 
which his name, scrawled by himself, is still read with 
interest. From such garrets many men of less parts than 
his have made their way to the wool-sack or to the epis- 
copal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the 
humiliations, threw away all the advantages of his situa- 
tion. He neglected the studies of the place, stood low at 
the examinations, was turned down to the bottom of his 
class for playing the buffoon in the lecture-room, was 
severely reprimanded for pumping on a constable, and was 
caned by a brutal tutor for giving a ball in the attic story 
of the college to some gay youths and damsels from the 
city. 



Oliver Goldsmith. 101 

While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided be- 
tween squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father 
died, leaving a mere pittance. The youth obtained liis 
bachelor's degree, and left the university. During some 
time the humble dwelling to which his widowed mother 
had retired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first 
year ; it was necessary that he should do something ; and 
his education seemed to have fitted him to do nothing but 
to dress himself in gaudy colors, of which he was as fond 
as a magpie, to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish airs, to 
play the flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories 
by the fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in 
turn without success. He applied for ordination ; but, as 
he applied in scarlet clothes, he was speedily turned out of 
the episcopal palace. He then became tutor in an opulent 
family, but soon quitted his situation in consequence of a 
dispute about play. Then he determined to "emigrate to 
America. His relations, with much satisfaction, saw him 
set out for Cork on a good horse, with thirty pounds in his 
pocket. But in six weeks he came back on a miserable 
hack, without a penny, and informed his mother that the 
ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair 
wind while he was at a party of pleasure, had sailed with- 
out him. Then he resolved to study the law. A generous 
kinsman advanced fifty pounds. With this sum Goldsmith 
went to Dublin, was enticed into a gaming-house, and lost 
every shilling. He then thought of medicine. A small 
purse was made up ; and in his twenty-fourth year he was 
sent to Edinburgh. At Edinburgh he passed eighteen 
months in nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up 
some superficial information about chemistry and natural 
history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to 
study physic. He left that celebrated university, the 
third university at which he had resided, in his twenty- 
seventh year, without a degree, with the merest smattering 



102 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

of medical knowledge, and with no property but his clothes 
and his flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. 
He rambled on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzer- 
land, j)laying tunes which everywhere set the peasantry 
dancing, and which often procured for him a supper and a 
bed. He wandered as far as Italy. His musical perform- 
ances, indeed, were not to the taste-' of the Italians ; but he 
contrived to live on the alms which he obtained at the gates 
of convents. It should, however, be observed, that the 
stories which he told about this part of his life ought to be 
received with great caution ; for strict veracity was never 
one of his virtues ; and a man who is ordinarily inaccurate 
in narration is likely to be more than ordinarily inaccurate 
when he talks about his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, 
was so regardless of truth as to assert in print that he was 
present at a most interesting conversation between Voltaire 
and Fontenelle, and that this conversation took place at 
Paris. Now it is certain that Voltaire never was within 
a hundred leagues of Paris during the whole time which 
Goldsmith passed on the Continent. 

In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, 
without a friend, and without a calling. He had, indeed, if 
his own unsupported evidence may be trusted, obtained 
from the University of Padua a doctor's degree ; but this 
dignity proved utterly useless to him. In England his flute 
was not in request : there were no convents ; and he w^as 
forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. 
He turned strolling player ; but his face and figure were ill 
suited to the boards even of the humblest theatre. He 
pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for chari- 
table chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars, which made 
its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, 
and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so 
keenly, that he thought it a promotion to be permitted to 
earn his bread as a bookseller's hack ; but he soon found 



Oliver Goldsmith. 103 

the new yoke more galling than the old one, and was glad 
to become an usher again. He obtained a medical appoint- 
ment in the sei-vice of the East India Company ; but the 
appointment was speedily revoked. Why it was revoked 
we are not told. The subject was one on which he never 
liked to talk. It is probable that he was incompetent to 
perform the duties of the place. Then he presented himself 
at Surgeons' Hall for examination, as mate to a naval hos- 
pital. Even to so humble a post he was found unequal. 
By this time the school-master whom he had served for a 
morsel of food and the third part of a bed was no more. 
Nothing remained but to return to the lowest drudgery of 
literature. Goldsmith took a garret in a miserable court, to 
which he had to climb from the brink of Fleet Ditch by a 
dizzy ladder of flag-stones called Breakneck Steps. The 
court and the ascent have long disappeared ; but old Lon- 
doners well remember both. Here, at thirty, the unlucky 
adventurer sat down to toil like a galley-slave. 

In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some 
things which have survived, and many which have perished. 
He produced articles for reviews, magazines, and news- 
papers ; children's books, which, bound in gilt paper and 
adorned with hideous wood-cuts, appeared in the window of 
the once far-famed shop at the corner of St. Paul's Church- 
yard; An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in 
Europe, which, though of little or no value, is still reprinted 
among his works ; a Life of Beau ISTash, which is not re- 
printed, though it well deserves to be so ; a superficial and 
incorrect, but very readable. History of England, in a 
series of letters purporting to be addressed by a nobleman 
to his son ; and some very lively and amusing Sketches of 
London Society, in a series of letters purporting to be 
addressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All these 
works were anonymous ; but some of them were well known 
to be Goldsmith's ; and he gradually rose in the estimation 



104 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

of the booksellers for whom he drudged. He was, indeed, 
emphatically a popular writer. For accurate research or 
grave disquisition he was not well qualified by nature or by 
education. He knew nothing accurately : his reading had 
been desultory ; nor had he meditated deeply on what he 
had read. He had seen much of the world; but he had 
noticed and retained little more of what he had seen than 
some grotesque incidents and characters which happened to 
strike his fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily 
stored with materials, he used what materials he had in 
such a way as to produce a wonderful effect. There have 
been many greater writers ; but perhaps no writer was ever 
more uniformly agreeable. His style was always pure and 
easy, and, on proper occasions, pointed and energetic. His 
narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always 
picturesque, his humor rich and joyous, yet not without an 
occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that 
he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural 
grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a 
.great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and 
beggars, street-walkers, and merry-andrews, in those squalid 
dens which are the reproach of great capitals. 

As his name gradually became known, the circle of his 
acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson, who 
was then considered as the first of living English writers ; 
to Reynolds, the first of English painters ; and to Burke, 
who had not yet entered Parliament, but had distinguished 
himself greatly by his writings and by the eloquence of his 
conversation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became 
intimate. --In 1763 he was one of the nine original members 
of that celebrated fraternity which has sometimes been 
called the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed 
that epithet, and still glories in the simple name of The 
Club. 

By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwell- 



Oliver Goldsmith. 105 

ing at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken chambers 
in the more civilized region of the Inns of Court. But he 
was still often reduced to pitiable shifts. Towards the close 
of 1764 his rent was so long in arrear that his landlady one 
morning called in the help of a sheriff's officer. The debtor, 
in great perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson ; and 
Johnson, always friendly, though often surl}^, sent back the 
messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow speedily. 
He came, and found that Goldsmith had changed the guinea, 
and was railing at the landlady over a bottle of Madeira. 
Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and entreated his 
friend to consider calmly how money was to be procured. 
Goldsmith said that he had a novel ready for the press. 
Johnson glanced at the manuscript, saw that there were 
good things in it, took it to a bookseller, sold it for sixty 
pounds, and soon returned with the money. The rent was 
paid, and the sheriff's officer withdrew. According to one 
story. Goldsmith gave his landlady a sharp reprimand for 
her treatment of him ; according to another, he insisted on 
her joining him in a bowl of punch. Both stories are prob- 
ably true. The novel which was thus ushered into the 
world was the Vicar of Wakefield. 

But before the Vicar of Wakefield appeared in print, 
came the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In 
Christmas week, 1764, he published a poem, entitled the 
Traveller. It was the first work to which he had put 
his name ; and it at once raised him to the rank of a 
legitimate English classic. The opinion of the most skil- 
ful critics was that- nothing finer had appeared in verse 
since the fourth book of the Dunciad. In one respect, 
the Traveller differs from all Goldsmith's other writings. 
In general, his designs were bad, and his execution good. 
In the Traveller, the execution, though deserving of much 
praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical 
poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the 



106 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a 
crag among the Alps, near the point where three great 
countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, re- 
views his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, 
of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, 
which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or 
unjust, that our happiness depends little on political insti- 
tutions, and much on the temper and regulation of our 
minds. 

While the fourth edition of the Traveller was on the 
counters of the booksellers, the Vicar of Wakefield ap- 
peared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted 
down to our own time, and which is likely to last as long 
as our language. The fable is indeed one of the worst 
that ever was constructed. It wants, not merely that prob- 
ability which ought to be found in a tale of common Eng- 
lish life, but that consistency which ought to be found even 
in the wildest fiction about witches, giants, and fairies. 
But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of pastoral 
poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy. Moses 
and his spectacles, the Vicar and his monogamy, the 
Sharper and his cosmogony, the Squire proving from Aris- 
totle that relatives are related, Olivia preparing herself for 
the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by studying the 
controversy between Eobinson Crusoe and Friday, the great 
ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and 
Dr. Burdock's verses, and Mr. Burchell with his " Fudge ! " 
have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever been 
caused by matter packed into so small a number of pages. 
The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. 
As we approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker 
and thicker, and the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and 
rarer. ^ 

is. The^uccess which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist 
.^mbold^ned him to try his fortune as a dramatist. He 



Oliver Goldsmith. 107 

wrote the Goocl-Datured Man, a piece which had a worse 
fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at 
Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but 
was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by his 
benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, not less 
than five hundred pounds, five times as much as he had 
made by the Traveller and the Vicar of Wakefield together. 
The plot of the Good-natured Man is, like almost all Gold- 
smith's plots, very ill constructed. But some passages are 
exquisitely ludicrous ; much more ludicrous, indeed, than 
suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, 
mawkish play, entitled False Delicacy, had just had an 
immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During 
some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at trag- 
edies ; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to any- 
thing more than a grave smile was reprobated as low. It 
is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the 
Good-natured Man, that in which Miss Eichland finds her 
lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in 
full court-dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and 
should have been omitted after the first night. 
^ In 1770 appeared the Deserted Village. In mere dic- 
tion and versification, this celebrated poem is fully equal, 
l^erhaps superior, to the Traveller ; and it is generally 
preferred to the Traveller by that large class of readers 
who think, with Bayes in the Rehearsal, that the only 
use of a plan is to bring in fine things. More discerning 
judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the 
details, are shocked by one unpardonable fault which per- 
vades the whole. The fault which we mean is not that 
theory about wealth and luxury which has so often been 
censured by political economists. The theory is indeed 
false ; but the poem, considered merely as a poem, is not 
necessarily the worse on that account. The finest poem in, 
the Latin language, indeed the finest didactic poem in any 



108 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

language, was written in defence of the silliest and meanest 
of all systems of natural and moral i)liilosophy. A poet 
may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill ; but he cannot 
be pardoned for describing ill, for observing the world in 
which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no 
resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from 
real life monstrous combinations of things which never 
were, and never could be, found together. What would be 
thought of a painter who should mix August and January in 
one landscape, who should introduce a frozen river into 
a harvest scene? Would it be a sufficient defence of such 
a picture to say that every part was exquisitely colored, 
that the green hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, the 
wagons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sunburnt 
reapers wiping their foreheads, were very fine, and that the 
ice and the boys sliding were also very fine? To such a 
picture the Deserted Village bears a great resemblance. 
It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its 
happy days is a true English village. The village in 
its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery 
which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to 
two different countries, and to two different stages in the 
progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his 
native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, 
content, and tranquillity, as his Auburn. He had assuredly 
never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a para- 
dise turned out of their homes in one day, and forced to 
emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had prob- 
ably seen in Kent ; the ejectment he had probably seen in 
Munster; but by joining the two, he has produced some- 
thing which never was and never will be seen in any part of 
the world. 

In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden 
with a second play, She Stoops to Conquer. The manager 
was not without great difficulty induced to bring this piece 



Oliver Groldsmith. 109 

out. The sentimental comedy still reigned, and Goldsmith's 
comedies were not sentimental. The Good-natured Man 
had been too funny to succeed ; yet the mirth of the Good- 
natured Man was sober when compared with the rich droll- 
ery of She Stoops to Conquer, which is, in truth, an incom- 
parable farce in five acts. On this occasion, however, genius 
triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries were in a constant 
roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and 
Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily 
silenced by a general cry of " turn him out ! " or " throw 
him over ! " Two generations have since confirmed the ver- 
dict which was pronounced on that night. 

While Goldsmith was writing the Deserted Village and 
She Stoops to Conquer, he was employed on works of a very 
different kind, works from which he derived little reputa- 
tion, but much profit. He compiled for the use of schools a 
History of Kome, by which he made three hundred pounds ; 
a History of England, by which he made six hundred pounds ; 
a History of Greece, for which he received two hundred 
and fifty pounds ; a Natural History, for which the book- 
sellers covenanted to pay him eight hundred guineas. These 
works he produced without any elaborate research, by merely 
selecting, abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, 
and fiowing language, what he found in books well known 
to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. 
He committed some strange blunders; for he knew nothing 
with accuracy. Thus, in his History of England he tells us 
that Naseby is in Yorkshire ; nor did he correct this mis- 
take when the book was reprinted. He was very nearly 
hoaxed into putting into the History of Greece an account 
of a battle between Alexander the Great and Montezuma. 
In his Animated Nature he relates, with faith and with per- 
fect gravity, all the most absurd lies which he could find in 
books of travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that 
preach sermons, nightingales that repeat long conversa- 



110 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

tions. " If lie can tell a horse from a cow," says Johnson, 
^Hhat is the extent of his knowledge of zoology." How 
little Goldsmith was qualified to write about the physical 
sciences is sufficiently proved by two anecdotes. He on 
one occasion denied that the sun is longer in the northern 
than in the southern signs. It was vain to cite the author- 
ity of Maupertuis. " Maupertuis ! " he cried ; " I under- 
stand those matters better than Maupertuis." ^On another 
occasion he, in defiance of the evidence of his own senses, 
maintained obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed 
his dinner by moving his upper jaw. 

Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done 
more to make the first steps in the laborious road to knowl- 
edge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely dis- 
tinguished from the compilations of ordinary book-makers. 
He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master of the arts 
of selection and condensation. In these respects his his- 
tories of Eome and of England, and still more his own 
abridgments of these histories, well deserve to be studied. 
In general nothing is less attractive than an epitome : but 
the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are 
always amusing ; and to read them is considered by intelli- 
gent children not as a task, but as a pleasure. 

Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. 
He had the means of living in comfort, and even in what 
to one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks must 
have been luxury. His fame was great, and was constantly 
rising. He lived in what was intellectually far the best 
society of the kingdom, in a society in which no talent or 
accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of con- 
versation was cultivated with splendid success. There 
probably were never four talkers more admirable in four 
different ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Gar- 
rick ; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all 
the four. He aspired to share in their colloquial re- 



i* 



■ Oliver Goldsmith. Ill 

nown ; but never was ambition more unfortunate. It 
may seem strange that a man who wrote with so much 
perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have been, when- 
ever he took a part in conversation, an empty, noisy, 
bhuidering rattle. But on this point the evidence is over- 
whelming. So extraordinary was the contrast between 
I G-oldsmith's published works and the silly things which he 
*^said, that Horace Walpole described him as an inspired 
idiot. "Noll," said Garrick, "wrote like an angel, and 
talked like poor Pol.'' Chamier declared that it was a 
hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer 
could have really written the Traveller. Even Boswell 
could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked 
very well to hear honest Goldsmith run on. " Yes, sir," 
said Johnson, "but he should not like to hear himself." 
Minds differ as rivers differ. There are transparent and 
sparkling rivers from which it is delightful to drink as 
they flow ; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke 
and Johnson may be compared. But there are rivers of 
which the water when first drawn is turbid and noisome, 
but becomes pellucid as crystal and delicious to the taste if 
it be suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment ; and 
such a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His first 
thoughts on every subject were confused even to absurdity, 
but they required only a little time to work themselves 
clear. When he wrote they had that time, and therefore 
his readers pronounced him a man of genius ; but when he 
talked, he talked nonsense, and made himself the laughing- 
stock of his hearers. He was painfully sensible of his 
inferiority in conversation ; he felt every failure keenly ; 
yet he had not sufficient judgment and self-command to 
hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were 
always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he 
could not do. After every attempt, he felt that he had ex- 
posed himself, and writhed with shame and vexation ; yet 
the next moment he began again. 



112 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, 
which, in spite of their admiration of his writings, was not 
unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in his char- 
acter much to love, but very little to respect. His heart 
X was soft, even to weakness ; he was so generous, that he 
quite forgot to be just ; he forgave injuries so readily, that 
he might be said to invite them, and was so liberal to beg- 
gars that he had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher. 
He was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One 
vice of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy. But 
there is not the least reason to believe that this bad passion, 
though it sometimes made him wince and utter fretful 
exclamations, ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts 
the reputation of any of his rivals. The truth probably is, 
that he was not more envious, but merely less prudent, than 
his neighbors. His heart was on his lips. All those small 
jealousies, which are but too common among men of letters, 
but which a man of letters who is also a man of the world 
does his best to conceal, Goldsmith avowed with the simplic- 
ity of a child. When he was envious, instead of affecting 
indifference, instead of damning with faint praise, instead 
of doing injuries slyly and in the dark, he told everybody 
that he was envious. "Do not, pray do not, talk of John- 
son in such terms," he said to Boswell ; "you harrow up 
my very soul." George Steevens and Cumberland were men 
far too cunning to say such a thing. They would have 
echoed the praises of the man whom they envied, and then 
have sent to the newspapers anonymous libels upon him. 
Both what was good and what was bad in Goldsmith's 
character was to his associates a perfect security that he 
would never commit such villany. He was neither ill- 
natured enough, nor long-headed enough, to be guilty of 
any malicious act which required contrivance and disguise. 
Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of 
genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to struggle 



Oliver Goldsmith. 11^ 

with difficulties which at last broke his heart. But no rep- 
resentation can be more remote from the truth. He did, 
indeed, go through much sharp misery before he had done 
anything considerable in literature. But after his name 
had appeared on the title-page of the Traveller, he had 
none but himself to blame for his distresses. His average 
income during the last seven years of his life certainly 
exceeded four hundred pounds a year, and four hundred 
pounds a year ranked among the incomes of that day at 
least as high as eight hundred pounds a year would rank at 
present. A single man living in the Temple with four 
hundred pounds a year might then be called opulent. Not 
one in ten of the young gentlemen of good families who 
were studying the law there had so much. But all the 
wealth which Lord Clive had brought from Bengal, and Sir 
Lawrence Dundas from Germany, joined together, would not 
have sufficed for Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he 
had. He wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, 
paid court to venal beauties. He had also, it should be 
remembered to the honor of his heart, though not of his 
head, a guinea, or five, or ten, according to the state of his 
purse, ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it 
was not in dress or feasting, in promiscuous amours or pro- 
miscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been 
from boyhood a gambler, and at once the most sanguine and 
the most unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put off the day 
of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained 
advances from booksellers by promising to execute works 
which he never began. But at length this source of supply 
failed. He owed more than two thousand pounds, and he 
saw no hope of extrication from his embarrassments. His 
spirits and health gave way. He w^as attacked by a nervous 
fever, which he thought himself competent to treat. It 
would have been happy for him if his medical skill had 
been appreciated as justly by himself as by others. Not- 



I 



V 



114 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

withstanding the degree which he pretended to have re- 
ceived at Padua, he coukl procure no patients. "I do not 
practise," he once said ; " I make it a rule to prescribe only 
for my friends." "Pray, dear Doctor," said Beauclerk, 
" alter your rule, and prescribe only for your enemies." 
Goldsmith now, in spite of this excellent advice, prescribed 
for himself. The remedy aggravated the malady. The 
sick man was induced to call in real physicians, and they 
at one time imagined that they had cured the disease. Still 
his weakness and restlessness continued. He could get no 
sleep; he could take no food. "You are worse," said one 
of his medical attendants, "than you should be from the 
degree of fever which you have. Is your mind at ease ? " 
"No, it is not," were the last recorded words of Oliver 
Goldsmith. He died on the 3d of April, 1774, in his forty- 
sixth year. He was laid in the churchyard of the Temple ; 
but the spot was not marked by any inscription, and is now 
forgotten. The coffin was followed by Burke and Reynolds. 
Both these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, when 
he heard of Goldsmith's death, had burst into a flood of 
tears. 'Reynolds had been so much moved by the news, 
that he had flung aside his brush and palette for the day. 

A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem 
appeared, which will, as long as our language lasts, associ- 
ate the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. 
It has already been mentioned that he sometimes felt keenly 
the sarcasm which his wild, blundering talk brought upon 
him. He was, not long before his last illness, provoked 
into retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen, andl 
at that weapon he proved himself a match for all his assail-1 
ants together. Within a small compass he drew with a| 
singularly easy and vigorous pencil the characters of nine 
or ten of his intimate associates. Though this little work 
did not receive his last touches, it must always be regarded 
as a masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not to wish 



Oliver Golthinlth. 115 

that four or live likenesses wliicli liave no interest for pos- 
terity were wanting to that noble gallery, and that their 
places were supplied by sketches of Johnson and Gibbon, 
as hapj)y and vivid as the sketches of Burke and Garrick. 

Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honored him 
with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. ISTollekens was the 
sculptor, and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is much to 
be lamented that Johnson did not leave to posterity a more 
durable and a more valuable memorial of his friend. A life 
of Goldsmith would have been an inestimable addition to 
the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's 
writings more justly than Johnson ; no man was better 
acquainted with Goldsmith's character and habits ; and no 
man was more competent to delineate with truth and spirit 
the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were 
found in company with great weaknesses. But the list of 
poets to whose works Johnson was requested by the book- 
sellers to furnish prefaces ended with Lyttelton, who died 
in 1773. The line seems to have been drawn expressly for 
the purpose of excluding the person whose portrait would 
have most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, however, has 
been fortunate in his biographers. Within a few years his 
life has been written by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irv- 
ing, and by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior 
deserves great praise ; the style of Mr. Washington Irving 
is always pleasing ; but the highest place must in justice be 
assigned to the eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster. 



MADAME D'ARBLAY. 

(January, 1843.) 

Though the world saw anci heard little of Madame 
D'Arblay during the last forty years of her life, and though 
that little did not add to her fame, there were thousands, 
we believe, who felt a singular emotion when they learned 
that she was no longer among us. The news of her death 
carried the minds of men back at one leap over two genera- 
tions, to the time when her first literary triumphs were 
won. All those whom we had been accustomed to revere 
as intellectual patriarchs seemed children when compared 
with her ; for Burke had sat up all night to read her writ- 
ings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding, 
when Rogers was still a school-boy, and Southey still in 
petticoats. Yet more strange did it seem that we should 
just have lost one whose name had been widely celebrated 
before anybody had heard of some illustrious men who, 
twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and 
splendid career, borne with honor to the grave. Yet so it 
was. Frances Burney was at the height of fame and popu- 
larity before Cowper had published his first volume, before 
Porson had gone up to college, before Pitt had taken his 
seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine 
had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the appear- 
ance of her first work, sixty-two years had passed ; and this 
interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also 
with intellectual revolutions. Thousands of reputations 
had, during that period, sprung up, bloomed, withered, and 
disappeared. ■ New kinds of composition had come into 
116 



Madame D'Arhlay. 117 

fashion, had gone out of fashion, had been derided, had been 
forgotten. The fooleries of Delhi Crusca, and the fooleries 
of Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude, but 
had left no trace behind them ; nor had misdirected genius 
been able to save from decay the once flourishing schools of 
Godwin, of Darwin, and of Eadcliffe. Many books, writ- 
ten for temporary effect, had run through six or seven edi- 
tions, and had then been gathered to the novels of Afra 
Behn, and the epic poems of Sir Richard Blackmore. Yet 
the early works of Madame D'Arblay, in spite of the lapse 
of years, in spite of the change of manners, in spite of the 
popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, con- 
tinued to hold a high place in the public esteem. She lived 
to be a classic. Time set on her fame, before she went 
hence, that seal which is seldom set except on the fame of 
the departed. Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale, she 
survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of 
posterity. 

Having always felt a warm and sincere, though not a 
blind, admiration for her talents, we rejoiced to learn that 
her Diary was about to be made public. Our hopes, it is 
true, were not unmixed with fears. We could not forget 
the fate of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which were pub- 
lished ten years ago. That unfortunate book contained 
much that was curious and interesting. Yet it was received 
with a cry of disgust, and was speedily consigned to obliv- 
ion. The truth is, that it deserved its doom. It was written 
in Madame D'Arblay's later style, the worst style that lias 
ever been known among men. No genius, no information, 
could save from proscription a book so written. We, there- 
fore," opened the Diary with no small anxiety, trembling 
lest we should light upon some of that peculiar rhetoric 
which deforms almost every page of the Memoirs, and 
which it is impossible to read without a sensation made up 
of mirth, shame, and loathing. We soon, however, discov- 



118 Select Essays of Macaiday. 

ered, to our great delight, that this Diary was kept before 
Madame D'Arblay became eloquent. It is, for the most part, 
written in her earliest and best manner, in true woman's 
English, clear, natural, and lively. The two works are lying 
side by side before us ; and we never turn from the Memoirs 
to the Diary without a sense of relief. The difference is as 
great as the difference between the atmosphere of a per- 
fumer's shop, fetid with lavender-water and jasmine soap, 
and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May. Both 
works ought to be consulted by every 2:)erson who wishes to 
be well acquainted with the history of our literature and 
our manners. But to read the Diary is a pleasure ; to read 
the Memoirs will always be a task. 

We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to 
our readers if we attempt, with the help of these two books, 
to give them an account of the most important years of 
Madame D'Arblay's life. 

She was descended from a family which bore the name of 
Macburney, and which, though probably of Irish origin, had 
been long settled in Shropshire, and was possessed of con- 
siderable estates in that county. Unhappily, many years 
before her birth, the Macburneys began, as if of set purpose 
and in a spirit of determined rivalry, to expose and ruin 
themselves. The heir-apparent, Mr. James Macburne}^, 
offended his father by making a runaway match with an 
actress from Goodman's Fields. The old gentleman could 
devise no more judicious mode of wreaking vengeance on 
his undutiful boy than by marrying the cook. The cook 
gave birth to a son named Joseph, who succeeded to all the 
lands of the family, while James was cut off with a shilling. 
The favorite son, howqyer, was so extravagant that he soon 
became as poor as his disinherited brother. Both were 
forced to earn their bread by their labor. Joseph turned 
dancing-master, and settled in Norfolk. James struck off 
the Mac from the beginning of his name, and set up as a 



Madame D'Arhlay. 119 

portrait-painter at Chester. Here he had a son named 
Charles, well known as the author of the History of Music, 
and as the father of two remarkable children, of a son dis- 
tinguished by learning, and of a daughter still more honor- 
ably distinguished by genius. 

Cliarles early showed a taste for that art of which, at a 
later period, he became the historian. He was apprenticed 
to a celebrated musician in London, and applied himself to 
study with vigor and success. He soon found a kind and 
munificent patron in Fulk Greville, a high-born and high- 
bred man, who seems to have had in large measure all the 
accomplishments and all the follies, all the virtues and all 
the vices, which, a hundred years ago, were considered as 
making up the character of a fine gentleman. Under such 
protection, the young artist had every prospect of a brilliant 
career in the capital. But his health failed. It became 
necessary for him to retreat from the smoke and river fog 
of London to the pure air of the coast. He accepted the 
place of organist at Lynn, and settled at that town with a 
young lady who had recently become his wife. 

At Lynn, in June 1752, Frances Burney was born. 
Nothing in her childhood indicated that she would, while 
still a young woman, have secured for herself an honorable 
and permanent place among English writers. She was shy 
and silent. Her brothers and sisters called her a dunce, and 
not without some show of reason ; for at eight years old 
she did not know her letters. 

In 1760, Mr. Burney quitted Lynn for London, and took 
a house in Poland Street, a situation which had been 
fashionable in the reign of Queen Anne, but which, since 
that time, had been deserted by most of its wealthy and 
noble inhabitants. He afterward resided in St. Martin's 
Street, on the south side of Leicester Square. His house 
there is still well known, and will continue to be well known 
as long as our island retains any trace of civilization ; for it 



120 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

was the dwelling of Newton, and the square turret which 
distinguishes it from all the surrounding buildings was 
Newton's observatory. 

Mr. Burney at once obtained as many pupils of the most 
respectable description as he had time to attend, and was 
thus enabled to support his family, modestly indeed, and 
frugally, but in comfort and independence. His professional 
merit obtained for him the degree of Doctor of Music from 
the University of Oxford; and his works on subjects con- 
nected with his art gained for him a place, respectable, 
though certainly not eminent, among men of letters. 

The progress of the mind of Frances Burney, from her 
ninth to her twenty-fifth year, well deserves to be recorded. 
When her education had proceeded no farther than the 
hornbook, she lost her mother, and thenceforth she educated 
herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a father 
as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet-tempered man can 
well be. He loved his daughter dearly ; but it never seems 
to have occurred to him that a parent has other duties to 
perform to children than that of fondling them. It would 
indeed have been impossible for him to superintend their 
education himself. His professional engagements occuj^ied 
him all day. At seven in the morning he began to attend 
his pupils, and, when London was full, Was sometimes 
employed in teaching till eleven at night. He Avas often 
forced to carry in his pocket a tin box of sandwiches, and a 
bottle of wine and water, on which he dined in a hacknej^- 
coach, while hurrying from one scholar to another. Two 
of his daughters he sent to a seminary at Paris ; but he 
imagined that Frances would run some risk of being per- 
verted from the Protestant faith if she were educated in a 
Catholic country, and he therefore kept her at home. No 
governess, no teacher of any art or of any language, was 
provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how 
to write ; and, before she was fourteen, she began to find 
l^leasure in reading. 



Madame B'Arhlay, 121 

It was not, however, by reading that her intellect was 
formed. Indeed, when her best novels were produced, her 
knowledge of books was very small. When at the height 
of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most celebrated 
works of Voltaire and Moliere j and, what seems still more 
extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, 
who, when she was a girl, was the most popular of living 
poets. It is particularly deserving of observation that she 
appears to have been by no means a novel-reader. Her 
father's library was large 5 and he had admitted i^ito it so 
many books which rigid moralists generally exclude that he 
felt uneasy, as he afterward owned, when Johnson began to 
examine the shelves. But in the whole collection there 
was only a single novel, Fielding's Amelia. 

An education, however, which to most girls would have 
been useless, but which suited Fanny's mind better than 
elaborate culture, was in constant progress during her pas- 
sage from childhood to womanhood. The great book of 
human nature was turned over before her. Her father's 
social position was very peculiar. He belonged in fortune 
and station to the middle class. His daughters seem to 
have been suffered to mix freely with those whom butlers 
and waiting-maids call vulgar. We are told that they were 
in the habit of playing with the children of a wig-maker 
who lived in the adjoining house. Yet few nobles could 
assemble, in the most stately mansions of Grosvenor Square 
or St. James's Square, a society so various and so brilliant 
as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney's cabin. His 
mind, though not very powerful or capacious, was restlessly 
active ; and, in the intervals of his professional pursuits, he 
had contrived to lay up much miscellaneous information. 
His attainments, the suavity of his temper, and the gentle 
simplicity of his manners, had obtained for him ready 
admission to the first literary circles. While he was still 
at Lynn, he had won Johnson's heart by sounding with 



122 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

honest zeal the praises of the English Dictionary. In Lon- 
don the two friends met frequently, and agreed most har- 
moniously. One tie, indeed, was wanting to their mutual 
attachment. Burney loved his own art passionately; and 
Johnson just knew the bell of St. Clement's Church from 
the organ. They had, however, many topics in common; 
and on winter nights their conversations were sometimes 
prolonged till the fire had gone out and the candles had 
burned away to the wicks. Burney's admiration of the 
powers which had produced Rasselas and The Rambler 
bordered on idolatr}^ Johnson, on the other hand, conde- 
scended to growl out that Burney was an honest fellow, a 
man whom it was impossible not to like. 

Garrick, too, was a frequent visitor in Poland Street and 
St. Martin's Lane. That wonderful actor loved the society 
of children, partly from good-nature, and partly from vanity. 
The ecstasies of mirth and terror, which his gestures and 
play of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, 
flattered him quite as much as the applause of mature 
critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for 
the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shud- 
dering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by 
raving like a maniac in St. Luke's, and then at once became 
an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and 
made them laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks. 

But it would be tedious to recount the names of all the 
men of letters and artists whom Frances Burney had an 
opportunity of seeing and hearing. Colman, Twining, Har- 
ris, Baretti, Hawkesworth, Reynolds, Barry, were among 
those who occasionally surrounded the tea-table and supper- 
tray at her father's modest dwelling. This was not all. The 
distinction which Dr. Burney had acquired as a musician, 
and as the historian of music, attra,cted to his house the 
most eminent musical performers of that age. The greatest 
Italian singers who visited England regarded him as the 



Madame D'Arhlay. 123 

dispenser of fame in their art, and exerted themselves to 
obtain his suffrage. Pachierotti became his intimate friend. 
The rapacious Agujari, who sung for nobody else under fifty 
pounds an air, sang her best for Dr. Burney without a fee : 
and in the company of Dr. Burney even the haughty and 
eccentric Gabrielli constrained herself to behave with civil- 
ity. It was thus in his power to give, with scarcely any 
expense, concerts equal to those of the aristocracy. On 
such occasions the quiet street in which he lived was 
blocked up by coroneted chariots, and his little drawing- 
room was crowded with peers, peeresses, ministers, and 
ambassadors. On one evening, of which we happen to have 
a full account, there were present Lord Mulgrave, Lord 
Bruce, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Barrington from 
the War-office, Lord Sandwich from the Admiralty, Lord 
Ashburnham, with his gold key dangling from his pocket, 
and the French ambassador, M. De Guignes, renowned for 
his fine person and for his success in gallantry. But the 
great show of the night was the Russian ambassador, Count 
Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze with jewels, 
and in whose demeanor the untamed ferocity of the Scy- 
thian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French 
politeness. As he stalked about the small parlor, brushing 
the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each 
other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he had 
borne the chief part in the revolution to which his august 
mistress owed her throne ; and that his huge hands, now 
glittering with diamond rings, had given the last squeeze to 
the windpipe of her unfortunate husband. 

With such illustrious guests as these were mingled all 
the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind 
of game which is hunted in London every spring with 
more than Meltonian ardor and perseverance. Bruce, who 
had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water 
from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk 



124 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made 
all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Ota- 
heitan love-songs, such as those with which Oberea charmed 
her Opano. 

With the literary and fashionable society, which occasion- 
ally met under Dr. Burney's roof, Frances can scarcely be 
said to have mingled. She was not a musician, and could 
therefore bear no part in the concerts. She was shy almost 
to awkwardness, and scarcely ever joined in the conversa- 
tion. The slightest remark from a stranger disconcerted 
her ; and even the old friends of her father who tried to 
draw her out could seldom extract more than a Yes or a No. 
Her figure was small, her face not distinguished by beauty. 
She was therefore suffered to withdraw quietly to the back- 
ground, and, unobserved herself, to observe all that passed. 
Her nearest relations were aware that she had good sense, 
but seem not to have suspected that, under her demure and 
bashful deportment, were concealed a fertile invention and 
a keen sense of the ridiculous. She had not, it is true, an 
eye for the fine shades of character ; but every marked 
peculiarity instantly caught her notice, and remained en- 
graven on her imagination. Thus, while still a girl, she 
had laid up such a store of materials for fiction as few of 
those who mix much in the world are able to accumulate 
during a long life. She had watched and listened to people 
of every class, from princes and great officers of State 
down to artists living in garrets, and poets familiar with 
subterranean cook-shops. Hundreds of remarkable persons 
had passed in review before her, English, French, German, 
Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers 
of theatres, travellers leading about newly caught savages, 
and singing-women escorted by their husbands. 

So strong was the impression made on the mind of Frances 
by the society which she was in the habit of seeing and 
hearing, that she began to write little fictitious narratives 



Madame D'Arblay. 125 

as soon as she could use her pen with ease, which, as we 
have said, was not very early. Her sisters were amused by 
her stories ; but Dr. Burney knew nothing of their exist- 
ence ; and in another quarter her literary propensities met 
with serious discouragement. When she was fifteen, her 
father took a second wife. The new Mrs. Burney soon 
found out that her step-daughter was fond of scribbling, 
and delivered several good-natured lectures on the subject. 
The advice, no doubt, was well meant, and might have been 
given by the most judicious friend; for at that time, from 
causes to which we may hereafter advert, nothing could be 
more disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as 
a novel-writer. Frances yielded, relinquished her favorite 
pursuit, and made a bonfire of all her manuscripts. 

She now hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner 
with scrupulous regularity. But the dinners of that time 
were early ; and the afternoon was her own. Though she 
had given up novel-writing, she was still fond of using her 
pen. She began to keep a diary, and she corresponded 
largely with a person who seems to have had the chief 
share in the formation of her mind. This was Samuel 
Crisp, an old friend of her father. His name, well known, 
near a century ago, in the most splendid circles of London, 
has long been forgotten. His history is, however, so inter- 
esting and instructive, that it tempts us to venture on a 
digression. 

Long before Frances Burney was born, Mr. Crisp had 
made his entrance into the world, with every advantage. 
He was well connected and well educated. His face and 
figure were conspicuously handsome ; his manners were 
polished ; his fortune was easy ; his character was without 
stain ; he lived in the best society ; he had read much ; he 
talked well; his taste in literature, music, painting, archi- 
tecture, sculpture, was held in high esteem. Nothing that 
the world can give seemed to be wanting to his happiness 



126 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

and respectability, except that he should understand the 
limits of his powers, and should not throw away distinctions 
which were within his reach in the pursuit of distinctions 
which were unattainable. 

" It is an uncontrolled truth," says Swift, " that no man 
ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor 
a good one who mistook them." Every day brings with it 
fresh illustrations of this weight}^ s^yii^g ; but the best 
commentary that we remember is the history of Samuel 
Crisp. Men like him have their proper place, and it is a 
most important one, in the Commonwealth of Letters. It 
is by the judgment of such men that the rank of authors is 
finally determined. It is neither to the multitude, nor to 
the few who are gifted with great creative genius, that we 
are to look for sound critical decisions. The multitude, 
unacquainted with the best models, are captivated by what- 
ever stuns and dazzles them. They deserted Mrs. Siddons 
to run after Master Betty ; and they now prefer, we have 
no doubt. Jack Sheppard to Van Artevelde. A man of 
great original genius, on the other hand, a man who has 
attained to mastery in some high walk of art, is by no 
means to be implicitly trusted as a judge of the perform- 
ances of others. The erroneous decisions pronounced by 
such men are without number. It is commonly supposed 
that jealous}^ makes them unjust. But a more creditable 
exjDlanation may easily be found. The very excellence of 
a work shows that some of the faculties of the author have 
been developed at the expense of the rest ; for it is not 
given to the human intellect to expand ttself widely in all 
directions at once, and to be at the same time gigantic and 
well-proportioned. Whoever becomes pre-eminent in any 
art, nay, in any style of art, generally does so by devoting 
himself with intense and exclusive enthusiasm to the pur- 
suit of one kind of excellence. His perception of other 
kinds of excellence is therefore too often impaired. Out of 



Madame I)\irhlay. 127 

his own department he praises and blames at random, and 
is far less to be trusted than the mere connoisseur, who pro- 
duces nothing, and whose business is only to judge and 
enjoy. One painter is distinguished by his exquisite finish- 
ing. He toils day after day to bring the veins of a cabbage 
leaf, the folds of a lace veil, the wrinkles of an old woman's 
face, nearer and nearer to perfection. In the time which 
he employs on a square foot of canvas, a master of a differ- 
ent order covers the walls of a palace with gods burying 
giants under mountains, or makes the cupola of a church 
alive with seraphim and martyrs. The more fervent the 
passion of each of these artists for his art, the higher the 
merit of each in his own line, the more unlikely it is that 
they will justly appreciate each other. Many persons who 
never handled a pencil probably do far more justice to 
Michael Angelo than would have been done by Gerard 
Douw, and far more justice to Gerard Douw than would 
have been done by Michael Angelo. 

It is the same with literature. Thousands, who have no 
spark of the genius of Dryden or Wordsworth, do to 
Dryden the justice which has never been done by Words- 
worth, and to Wordsworth the justice which, we suspect, 
would never have been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson, 
Eichardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great 
body of intelligent and well-informed men. But Gray 
could see no merit in Rasselas ; and Johnson could see 
no merit in The Bard. Fielding thought Eichardson a 
solemn prig ; and Eichardson perpetually expressed con- 
tempt and disgust for Fielding's lowness. 

Mr. Crisp seems, as far as we can judge, to have been a 
man eminently qualified for the useful office of a connois- 
seur. His talents and knowledge fitted him to appreciate 
justly almost every species of intellectual superiority. As 
an adviser he was inestimable. Nay, he might probably 
have held a respectable rank as a writer, if he would have 



128 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

confined himself to some department of literature in which 
nothing more than sense, taste, and reading were required. 
Unhappily he set his heart on being a great poet, wrote a 
tragedy in five acts on the death of Virginia, and offered it 
to Garrick, who was his personal friend. Garrick read, 
shook his head, and expressed a doubt whether it would be 
wise in Mr. Crisp to stake a reputation, which stood high, 
on the success of such a piece. But the author, blinded 
by ambition, set in motion a machinery such as none could 
long resist. His intercessors were the most eloquent man 
and the most lovely woman of that generation. Pitt was 
induced to read Virginia, and to pronounce it excellent. 
Lady Coventry, with fingers which might have furnished a 
model to sculptors, forced the manuscript into the reluctant 
hand of the manager; and, in the year 1754,, the play was 
brought forward. 

Nothing that skill or friendship could do was omitted. 
Garrick wrote both prologue and epilogue. The zealous 
friends of the author filled every box ; and, by their stren- 
uous exertions, the life of the play was prolonged during ten 
nights. But, though there was no clamorous reprobation, 
it was universally felt that the attempt had failed. When 
Virginia was printed, the public disappointment was even 
greater than at the representation. The critics, the Monthly 
Reviewers in particular, fell on plot, characters, and diction 
without mercy, but, we fear, not without justice. We have 
never met with a copy of the play ; but, if we may judge 
from the scene which is extracted in the Gentleman's Maga- 
zine, and which does not appear to have been malevolently 
selected, we should say that nothing but the acting of Gar- 
rick, and the partiality of the audience, could have saved so 
feeble and unnatural a drama from instant damnation. 

The ambition of the poet was still unsubdued. When 
the London season closed, he applied himself vigorously to 
the work of removing blemishes. He does not seem to have 



Madame D'Arhlay. 129 

suspected, what we are strongly inclined to suspect, that 
the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages 
which were meant to be fine were, in truth, bursts of that 
tame extravagance into which writers fall when they set 
themselves to be sublime and pathetic in spite of nature. 
He omitted, added, retouched, and flattered himself with 
hopes of a complete success in the following year ; but in 
the following year Garrick showed no disposition to bring 
the amended tragedy on the stage. Solicitation and remon- 
strances were tried in vain. Lady Coventry, drooping 
under that malady which seems ever to select what is 
loveliest for its prey, could render no assistance. The 
manager's language was civilly evasive, but his resolution 
was inflexible. 

Crisp had committed a great error, but he had escaped 
with a very slight penance. His play had not been hooted 
from the boards. It had, on the contrary, been better re- 
ceived than many very estimable performances have been, 
than Johnson's Irene, for example, or Goldsmith's Good- 
natured Man. Had Crisp been wise, he would have thought 
himself happy in having purchased self-knowledge so cheap. 
He would have relinquished, without vain repinings, the 
hope of poetical distinction, and would have turned to the 
many sources of happiness which he still possessed. Had 
he been, on the other hand, an unfeeling and unblushing 
dunce, he would have gone on writing scores of bad trage- 
dies, in defiance of censure and. derision. But he had too 
much sense to risk a second defeat, yet too little sense to 
bear his first defeat like a man. The fatal delusion that he 
was a great dramatist had taken firm possession of his 
mind. His failure he attributed to every cause except the 
true one. He complained of the ill-will of Garrick, who 
appears to have done for the play everything that ability 
and zeal could do, and who, from selfish motives, would, of 
course, have been well pleased if Virginia had been as sue- 



130 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

cessful as the Beggar's Oj)era. ISTay, Crisp complained of 
the languor of the friends whose partiality had given him 
three benefit nights to which he had no claim. He com- 
plained of the injustice of the spectators, when, in truth, 
he ought to have been grateful for their unexampled pa- 
tience. He lost his temper and spirits, and became a cynic 
and a hater of mankind. From London he retired to Hamp- 
ton, and from Hampton to a solitary and long-deserted man- 
sion, built on a common in one of the wildest tracts of Sur- 
rey. No road, not even a sheep-walk, connected his lonely 
dwelling with the abodes of men. The place of his retreat 
was strictly concealed from his old associates. In the spring 
he sometimes emerged, and was seen at exhibitions and con- 
certs in London. But he soon disappeared, and hid him- 
self, with no society but his books, in his dreary hermitage. 
He survived his failure about thirty years. A ncAV genera- 
tion sprung up around him. No memory of his bad verses 
remained among men. His very name was forgotten. How 
completely the world had lost sight of him will appear from 
a single circumstance. We looked for him in a copious 
Dictionary of Dramatic Authors, published while he w^as 
still alive, and we found only that Mr. Henry Crisp, of the 
Custom-house, had written a play called Virginia, acted in 
1754. To the last, however, the unhappy man continued to 
brood over the injustice of the manager and the pit, and tried 
to convince himself and others that he had missed the high- 
est literary honors onty because he had omitted some fine 
passages in compliance with Garrick's judgment. Alas for 
human nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and 
bleed so much longer than the wounds of affection ! Few 
people, we believe, whose nearest friends and relations died 
in 1754, had any acute feeling of the loss in 1782. Dear 
sisters, and favorite daughters, and brides snatched away 
before the honey-moon was passed, had been forgotten, or 
were remembered only wdth a tranquil regret. But Samuel 



Madame D'Arhlay. 131 

Crisp was still mourning for his tragedy, like Rachel weep- 
ing for her children, and would not be comforted. " Never," 
such was his language twenty-eight years after his disaster, 
"never give up or alter a tittle unless it perfectly coincides 
with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my sor- 
row and my cost. But mum ! " Soon after these words 
were written, his life, a life which might have been emi- 
nently useful and happy, ended in the same gloom in which, 
daring more than a quarter of a century, it had been passed. 
We have thought it worth while to rescue from oblivion 
this curious fragment of literary history. It seems to us at 
once ludicrous, melancholy, and full of instruction. 

Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys. 
To them alone was confided the name of the desolate old 
hall in which he hid himself like a wild beast in a den. 
For them were reserved such remains of his humanity as 
had survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he 
regarded as his daughter. He called her his Fannikin ; 
and she, in return, called him her dear Daddy. In truth, he 
seems to have done much more than her real parents for the 
development of her intellect ; for though he was a bad poet, 
he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent counsellor. 
He was particularly fond of the concerts in Poland Street. 
They had, indeed, been commenced at his suggestion ; and 
when he visited London, he constantly attended them. 
But when he grew old, and when gout, brought on partly by 
mental irritation, confined him to his retreat, he was desir- 
ous of having a glimpse of that gay and brilliant world 
from which he was exiled, and he pressed Fannikin to send 
him full accounts of her father's evening parties. A few of 
her letters to him have been published ; and it is impossible 
to read them without discerning in them all the powers 
which afterward produced Evelina and Cecilia, the quick- 
ness in catching every odd peculiarity of character and 
manner, the skill in grouping, the humor, often richly 
comic, sometimes even farcical. 



132 Select Essays of Macaiday. 

Fanny's propensity to novel-writing had, for a time, been 
kept down. Tt now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes 
and heroines of the tales which had perished in the flames 
were still present to the eye of her mind. One favorite 
story, in particular, haunted her imagination. It was 
about a certain Caroline Evelyn, a beautiful damsel who 
made an unfortunate love-match, and died, leaving an infant 
daughter. Frances began to inmge to herself the various 
scenes, tragic and comic, through which the poor motherless 
girl, highly connected on one side, meanly connected on the 
other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings, good 
and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid 
young orphan : a coarse sea-captain ; an ugly, insolent fop, 
blazing in a superb court-dress ; another fop, as ugly and as 
insolent, but lodged on Snow Hill, and tricked out in sec- 
ond-hand finery for the Hampstead ball : an old woman, all 
wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a miss 
of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar 
French and vulgar English ; a poet lean and ragged, with a 
broad Scotch accent. By degrees these shadows acquired 
stronger and stronger consistence ; the impulse which 
urged Frances to write became irresistible ; and the result 
was the history of Evelina. 

Then came, naturally enough, a wish, mingled with many 
fears, to appear before the public; for, timid as Frances 
was, and basliful, and altogether unaccustomed to hear her 
own praises, it is clear that she wanted neither a strong 
passion for distinction, nor a just confidence in her own 
powers. Her scheme was to become, if possible, a candidate 
for fame, without running any risk of disgrace. She had 
not money to bear the expense of printing. It was, there- 
fore, necessary that some bookseller should be induced to 
take the risk ; and such a bookseller was not readily found. 
Dodsley refused even to look at the manuscript unless he 
were intrusted with the name of the author. A publisher 



Madame B'Arhlay, 133 

in Fleet Street, named Lowndes, was more complaisant. 
Some correspondence took place between this person and 
Miss Bnrney, who took the name of Grafton, and desired 
that the letters addressed to her might be left at the 
Orange Coffee-house. But, before the bargain was finally 
struck, Fanny thought it her duty to obtain her father's 
consent. She told him that she had written a book, that 
she wished to have his permission to publish it anony- 
mously, but that she hoped that he would not insist upon 
seeing it. What followed may serve to illustrate what we 
meant when we said that Dr. Burney was as bad a father as 
so good-hearted a man could possibly be. It never seems to 
have crossed his mind that Fanny was about to take a step 
on which the whole happiness of her life might depend, a 
step which might raise her to an honorable eminence, or 
cover her with ridicule and contempt. Several people had 
already been trusted, and strict concealment was therefore 
not to be expected. On so grave an occasion, it was surely 
his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win her 
confidence, to prevent her from exposing herself if her book 
were a bad one, and, if it were a good one, to see that the 
terms which she made with the publisher were likely to be 
beneficial to her. Instead of this, he only stared, burst out 
a-laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as she liked, and 
never even asked the name of her work. The contract with 
Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were 
given for the copyright, and were accepted by Fanny with 
delight. Her father's inexcusable neglect of his duty hap- 
pily caused her no worse evil than the loss of twelve or fif- 
teen hundred pounds. 

After many dela3^s Evelina appeared in January 1778. 
Poor Fanny was sick with terror, and durst hardly stir out 
of doors. Some days passed before anything was heard of 
the book. It had, indeed, nothing but its own merits to 
push it into public favor. Its author was unknown. The 



134 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

house by which it was published was not, we believe, held 
in high estimation. No body of partisans had been engaged 
to applaud. The better class of readers expected little from 
a novel about a young lady's entrance into the world. 
There was, indeed, at that time a disposition among the 
most respectable people to condemn novels generally : nor 
was this disposition by any means without excuse; for 
works of that sort were then almost always silly, and very 
frequently wicked. 

Soon, however, the first faint accents of praise began to 
be heard. The keepers of the circulating libraries reported 
that everybody was asking for Evelina, and that some per- 
son had guessed Anstey to be the author. Then came a 
favorable notice in the London Review ; then another still 
more favorable in the Monthly. And now the book found 
its way to tables which had seldom been polluted by marble- 
covered volumes. Scholars and statesmen, who contemptu- 
ously abandoned the crowd of romances to Miss Lydia 
Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed to 
own that they could not tear themselves away from Eve- 
lina. Fine carriages and rich liveries, not often seen east 
of Temple Bar, were attracted to the publisher's shop in 
Fleet Street. Lowndes was daily questioned about the 
author, but was himself as much in the dark as any of the 
questioners. The mystery, however, could not remain a 
mystery long. It was known to brothers and sisters, aunts 
and cousins ; and they were far too proud and too happy to 
be discreet. Dr. Burney wept over the book in rapture. 
Daddy Crisp shook his fist at his Fannikin in affectionate 
anger at not having been admitted to her confidence. The 
truth was whispered to Mrs. Thrale ; and then it began to 
spread fast. 

The book had been admired while it was ascribed to men 
of letters long conversant with the world, and accustomed 
to composition. But when it was known that a reserved, 



■Madame D'Arhlay. 135 

silent young woman had produced the best work of fiction 
that had appeared since the death of Smollett, the acclama- 
tions were redoubled. What she had done was, indeed, 
extraordinary. But, as usual, various reports improved the 
story till it became miraculous. Evelina, it was said, was 
the work of a girl of seventeen. Incredible as this tale 
was, it continued to be repeated down to our own time. 
Frances was too honest to confirm it. Probably she was 
too much a woman to contradict it ; and it was long before 
any of her detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. 
Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the 
generation which witnessed her first appearance. There 
was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp 
George Steevens, and the polecat John Williams. It did 
not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of 
Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with 
having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous exploit 
was reserved for a bad writer of our own time, whose spite 
she had provoked by not furnishing him with materials for 
a worthless edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, some 
sheets of which our readers have doubtless seen round par- 
cels of better books. 

But we must return to our story. The triumph was 
complete. The timid and obscure girl found herself on the 
highest pinnacle of fame. Great men, on whom she had 
gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed her 
with admiration, tempered by the tenderness due to her sex 
and age. Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, 
were among her most ardent eulogists. Cumberland ac- 
knowledged her merit, after his fashion, by biting his lips 
and wriggling in his chair whenever her name was men- 
tioned. But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the 
highest perfection, the sweets of flattery, mingled with the 
sweets of friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of 
prosperity and popularity, with gay spirits, quick wit, 



136 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

sliowy though superficial acquirements, pleasing though not 
refined manners, a singularly amiable temper, and a loving 
heart, felt toward Fanny as toward a younger sister. With 
the Thrales Johnson was domesticated. He was an old 
friend of Dr. Burney ; but he had probably taken little 
notice of Dr. Burney's daughters, and Fann}^, we imagine, 
had never in her life dared to speak to him, unless to ask 
whether he wanted a nineteenth or a twentieth cuj) of tea. 
He was charmed by her tale, and preferred it to the novels of 
Fielding, to whom, indeed, he had always been grossly unjust. 
He did not, indeed, carry his partiality so far as to place 
Evelina by the side of Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison ; 
3' et he said that his little favorite had done enough to have 
made even Eichardson feel uneasy. With Johnson's cordial 
approbation of the book was mingled a fondness, half gal- 
lant, half paternal, for the writer ; and this fondness his age 
and character entitled him to show without restraint. He 
began by putting her hand to his lips. But he soon clasped 
her in his huge arms, and implored her to be a good girl. 
She was his pet, his dear love, his dear little Burney, his 
little character-monger. At one time, he broke forth in 
praise of the good taste of her caps. At another time he 
insisted on teaching her Latin. That, with all his coarse- 
ness and irritability, he was a man of sterling benevolence 
has long been acknowledged. But how gentle and endear- 
ing his deportment could be was not known till the Eecol- 
lections of Madame D'Arblay were published. 

We have mentioned a few of the most eminent of those 
who paid their homage to the author of Evelina. The 
crowd of inferior admirers would require a catalogue as long 
as that in the second book of the Iliad. In that cata- 
logue would be Mrs. Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things; 
and Seward, much given to yawning ; and Baretti, who 
slew the man in the Haymarket ; and Paoli, talking broken 
English ; and Langton, taller by the head than any other 



Madame D'Arhlay. 137 

member of the club; and Lady Millar, who kept a vase 
wherein fools were wont to put bad verses ; and Jerning- 
ham, who wrote verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady 
Millar ; and Dr. Franklin, not, as some have dreamed, the 
great Pennsylvanian Dr. Franklin, who could not then have 
-paid his respects to Miss Burney without much risk of 
being hanged, drawn, and quartered, but Dr. Franklin the 
less, 

Afas 
jxe'nav, ovTL t6(Xos ye ocros TeXa/xwi'ios A^as, 
dXXd TToXv jxeiojv. 

It would not have been surprising if such success had 
turned even a strong head, and corrupted even a generous 
and affectionate nature. But, in the Diary, we can find 
no trace of any fooling inconsistent with a truly modest 
and amiable disposition. There is, indeed, abundant proof 
that Frances enjoyed with an intense, though a troubled 
joy, the honors which her genius had won 5 but it is equally 
clear that her happiness sprung from the happiness of her 
father, her sister, and her dear Daddy Crisp. While flat- 
tered by the great, the opulent, and the learned, while 
followed along the Steyne at Brighton, and the Pantiles at 
Tunbridge Wells, by the gaze of admiring crowds, her heart 
seems to have been still with the little domestic circle in 
St. Martin's Street. If she recorded with minute diligence 
all the compliments, delicate and coarse, which she heard 
wherever she turned, she recorded them for the eyes of two 
or three persons who had loved her from infancy, who had 
loved her in obscurity, and to whom her fame gave the 
purest and most exquisite delight. Nothing can be more 
unjust than to confound these outpourings of a kind heart, 
sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a blue-stock- 
ing, who prates to all who come near her about her own 
novel or her own volume of sonnets. 

It was natural that the triumphant issue of Miss Burney's 



138 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

first venture should tempt her to try a second. Evelina, 
though it had raised her fame, had added nothing to her 
fortune. Some of her friends urged her to write for the 
stage. Johnson promised to give her his advice as to the 
composition. Murphy, who was supposed to understand 
the temper of the pit as well as any man of his time, under- 
took to instruct her as to stage effect. Sheridan declared 
that he would accept a play from her without even reading 
it. Thus encouraged, she wrote a comedy named The 
Witlings. Fortunately it was never acted or printed. We 
can, we think, easily perceive, from the little which is said 
on the subject in the Diary, that The Witlings would 
have been damned, and that Murphy and Sheridan thought 
so, though they were too polite to say so. Happily Frances 
had a friend who was not afraid to give her pain. Crisp, 
wiser for her than he had been for himself, read the manu- 
script in his lonely retreat, and manfully told her that she 
had failed, that to remove blemishes here and there would 
be useless, that the piece had abundance of wit, but no 
interest, that it was bad as a whole, that it would remind 
every reader of the Femmes Savantes, which, strange to say, 
she had never read, and that she could not sustain so close 
a comparison with Moliere. This opinion, in which Dr. 
Burney concurred, was sent to Frances, in what she called 
"a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle.'- But she had too 
much sense not to know that it was better to be hissed and 
catcalled by her Daddy than by a whole sea of heads in the 
pit of Drury Lane Theatre ; and she had too good a heart 
not to be grateful for so rare an act of friendshi]^. She re- 
turned an answer, which shows how well she deserved to 
have a judicious, faithful, and affectionate adviser. "I 
intend." she wrote, " to console myself for your censure by 
this greatest proof I have ever received of the sincerity, 
candor, and, let me add, esteem, of my dear Daddy. And 
as I happen to love myself more than my play, this con- 



Madame D'ArUay. 139 

solation is not a very trifling one. This, however, seriously 
1 do believe, that when my two daddies put their heads to- 
gether to concert that hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle 
they sent me, they felt as sorry for poor little Miss Bayes 
as she could possibly do for herself. You see I do not at- 
tempt to repay your frankness with an air of pretended 
carelessness. But, though somewhat disconcerted just now, 
I will promise not to let my vexation live out another day. 
Adieu, my dear Daddy : I won't be mortified, and I won't 
be downed; but I will be proud to find I have, out of my 
own family, as well as in it, a friend who loves me well 
enough to speak plain truth to me." 

Frances now turned from her dramatic schemes to an 
undertaking far better suited to her talents. She deter- 
mined to write a new tale, on a plan excellently contrived 
for the display of the powers in which lier superiority to 
other writers lay. It was, in truth, a grand and various 
picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of 
men and women, each marked by some strong, peculiar 
feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of 
blood and the pride of money, morbid restlessness and 
morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious silence, a 
Democritus to laugh at everything, and a Heraclitus to 
lament over everything. The work proceeded fast, and in 
twelve months was completed. It wanted something of 
the simplicity which had been among the most attractive 
charms of Evelina ; but it furnished ample proof that the 
four years which had elapsed since Evelina appeared had 
not been unprofitably spent. Those who saw Cecilia 
in manuscript pronounced it the best novel of the age. 
Mrs. Thrale laughed and wept over it. Crisp was even 
vehement in applause, and offered to insure the rapid and 
complete success of the book for half a crown. What Miss 
Burney received for the copyright is not mentioned in the 
Diary ; but we have observed several expressions from 



140 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

which we infer that the sum was considerable. That the 
sale would be great nobody could doubt ; and Frances now 
had shrewd and experienced advisers, who would not suffer 
her to wrong herself. We have been told that the pub- 
lishers gave her two thousand pounds, and we have no 
doubt that they might have given a still larger sum without 
being losers. 

Cecilia was published in the summer of 1782. The 
curiosity of the town was intense. We have been informed 
by persons who remember those days that no romance of 
Sir Walter Scott was more impatiently awaited, or more 
eagerly snatched from the counters of the booksellers. 
High as public expectation was, it was amply satisfied ; 
and Cecilia was placed, by general acclamation, among the 
classical novels of England. 

Miss Burney was now thirty. Her youth had been singu- 
larly prosperous ; but clouds soon began to gather over that 
clear and radiant dawn. Events deeply painful to a heart 
so kind as that of Frances followed each other in rapid 
succession. She was first called upon to attend the death- 
bed of her best friend, Samuel Crisp. When she returned 
to St. Martin's Street, after performing this melancholy 
duty, she was appalled by hearing that Johnson had been 
struck with paralysis ; and, not many mouths later, she 
parted from him for the last time with solemn tenderness. 
He wished to look on her once more ; and on the day before 
his death she long remained in tears on the stairs leading 
to his bedroom, in the hope that she might be called in to 
receive his blessing. He was then sinking fast, and though 
he sent her an affectionate message, was unable to see her. 
But this was not the worst. There are separations far 
more cruel than those which are made by death. She 
might weep with proud affection for Crisp and Johnson. 
She had to blush as well as to weep for Mrs. Thrale. 

Life, however, still smiled upon Frances. Domestic hap- 



p 



Madame D'Arhlay. 141 



piness, friendship, independencej leisure, letters, all these 
things were hers ; and she flung them all away. 

Among the distinguished persons to whom she had been 
introduced, none appears to have stood higher in her regard 
than Mrs. Delany. This lady was an interesting and vener- 
able relic of a past age. She was the niece of George 
Granville, Lord Lansdowne, who, in his youth, exchanged 
verses and compliments with Edmund Waller, and who was 
among the first to applaud the opening genius of Pope. 
She had married Dr. Delany, a man known to his contem- 
poraries as a profound scholar and an eloquent preacher, 
but remembered in our time chiefly as one of that small 
circle in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tortured by disap- 
pointed ambition, by remorse, and by the approaches of 
madness, sought for amusement and repose. Dr. Delany 
had long been dead. His widow, nobly descended, emi- 
nently accomplished, and retaining, in spite of the infirmi- 
ties of advanced age, the vigor of her faculties and the 
serenity of her temper, enjoyed and deserved the favor of 
the royal family. She had a pension of three hundred a 
year ; and a house at AVindsor, belonging to the crown, had 
been fitted up for her accommodation. At this house the 
king and queen sometimes called, and found a very natural 
pleasure in thus catching an occasional glimpse of the pri- 
vate life of English families. 

In December 1785, Miss Burney was on a visit to Mrs. 
Delany at Windsor. The dinner was over. The old lady 
was taking a nap. Her grandniece, a little girl of seven, 
was playing at some Christmas game with the visitors, 
when the door opened, and a stout gentleman entered un- 
announced, with a star on his breast, and " What ? what ? 
what ? " in his mouth. A cry of " The King ! " was set up. 
A general scampering followed. Miss Burney owns that 
she could not have been more terrified if she had seen a 
ghost. But Mrs. Delany came forward to pay her duty to 



142 Select Essai/s of Maeaulay. 

lier royal friend, and the disturbance was quieted. Frances 
was then presented, and underwent a long examination and 
cross-examination about all that she had written and all 
that she meant to write. The queen soon made her appear- 
ance, and his Majesty repeated, for the benefit of his con- 
sort, the information which he had extracted from Miss 
Burney. The good-nature of the royal pair might have 
softened even the authors of the Probationary Odes, and 
could not but be delightful to a young lady who had been 
brought up a Tory. In a few days the visit was repeated. 
Miss Burney was more at ease than before. His Majesty, 
instead of seeking for information, condescended to impart 
it, and passed sentence on many great writers, English and 
foreign. Voltaire he pronounced a monster. Rousseau he 
liked rather better. " But was there ever," he cried, " such 
stuff as great part of Shakspeare ? Only one must not say 
so. But what think you ? What ? Is there not sad stuff ? 
What? What?" 

The next day Frances enjoyed the privilege of listening 
to some equally valuable criticism uttered by the queen 
touching Goethe and Klopstock, and might have learned an 
important lesson of economy from the mode in which her 
Majesty's library had been formed. " I picked the book up 
on a stall," said the queen. " Oh, it is amazing what good 
books there are on stalls ! " Mrs. Delany, who seems to 
have understood from these words that her Majesty was in 
the habit of exploring the booths of Moorfields and Holy- 
well Street in person, could not suppress an exclamation of 
surprise. " Why," said the queen, " I don't jjick them up 
myself. But I have a servant very clever ; and, if they are 
not to be had at the booksellers, they are not for me more 
than for another." Miss Burney describes this conversa- 
tion as delightful ; and, indeed, we cannot wonder that, 
with her literary tastes, she should be delighted at hearing 
in how magnificent a manner the greatest lady in the land 
encouraged literature. 



Madame D'Arblay. 143 

The truth is, that Frances was fascinated by the conde- 
scending kindness of the two great personages to whom she 
had been presented. Her father was even more infatuated 
than herself. The result was a step of which we cannot 
think with patience, but which, recorded as it is, with all 
its consequences, in these volumes, deserves at least this 
praise, that it has furnished a most impressive warning. 

A German lady of the name of Haggerdorn, one of the 
keepers of the Queen's robes, retired about this time ; and 
her Majesty offered the vacant post to Miss Burney. When 
we consider that Miss Burney w^as decidedly the most pop- 
ular writer of fictitious narrative then living ; that compe- 
tence, if not opulence, was within her reach ; and that she 
was more than usually happy in her domestic circle, and 
when we compare the sacrifice which she was invited to 
make with the remuneration which was held out to her, we 
are divided between laughter and indignation. 

What was demanded of her was that she should consent 
to be almost as completely separated from her family and 
friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a 
prisoner as if she had been sent to jail for a libel ; that 
with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest 
living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing 
snuff and sticking pins ; that she should be summoned by 
a waiting-woman's bell to a waiting-woman's duties ; that 
she should pass her whole life under the restraints of a 
paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was ready 
to swoon wdth hunger, should sometimes stand till her 
knees gave way with fatigue ; that she should not dare to 
speak or move without considering how her mistress might 
like her words and gestures. Instead of those distinguished 
men and women, the flower of all political parties, with 
whom she had been in the habit of mixing on terms of 
equal friendship, she was to have for her perpetual com- 
panion the chief keeper of the robes, an old hag from 



144 Select Essays of Macaulay, 

Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and 
of temper which, naturally savage, had now been exasper- 
ated by disease. Now and then, indeed, poor Prances might 
console herself for the loss of Burke's and Windham's soci- 
ety, by joining in the " celestial colloquy sublime " of his 
majesty's equerries. 

And what was the consideration for which she was to sell 
herself to this slavery ? A peerage in her own right ? A 
pension of two thousand a year for life ? A seventy-four 
for her brother in the navy ? A deanery for her brother in 
the Church ? Not so. The price at which she was valued 
was her board, her lodging, the attendance of a man-servant, 
and two hundred pounds a year ! 

The man who, even when hard pressed by hunger, sells 
his birthright for a mess of pottage, is unwise. But what 
shall we say of him who parts with his birthright, and does 
not get even the pottage in return ? It is not necessary to 
inquire whether opulence be an adequate compensation for 
the sacrifice of bodily and mental freedom ; for Frances 
Burney i)aid for leave to be a prisoner and a menial. It 
was evidently understood as one of the terms of her engage- 
ment, that, while she was a member of the royal household, 
she was not to appear before the public as an author ; and, 
even had there been no such understanding, her avocations 
w^ere such as left her no leisure for any considerable intel- 
lectual effort. That her place was incompatible Avith her 
literary pursuits was, indeed, frankly acknowledged by the 
king when she resigned. " She has given up," he said, 
" five years of her pen." That during those five years she 
might, without painful exertion, without any exertion that 
would not have been a pleasure, have earned enough to buy 
an annuity for life much larger than the precarious salary 
which she received at court, is quite certain. The same 
income, too, which in St. Martin's Street would have 
afforded her every comfort, must have been found scanty 



Madame B'Arhlay. 145 

at St. James's. We cannot venture to speak confidently of 
the price of millinery and jewellery ; but we are greatly 
deceived if a lady, who had to attend Queen Charlotte on 
many public occasions, could possibly save a farthing out 
of a salary of two hundred a year. The principle of the 
arrangement was, in short, simply this, that Frances Burney 
should become a slave, and should be rewarded by being 
made a beggar. 

With what object their majesties brought her to their 
palace, we must own ourselves unable to conceive. Their 
object could not be to encourage her literary exertions ; for 
they took her from a situation in which it was almost cer- 
tain that she would write, and put her into a situation in 
which it was impossible for her to write. Their object 
could not be to promote her pecuniary interest ; for they 
took her from a situation where she was likely to become 
rich, and put her into a situation in which she could not but 
continue poor. Their object could not be to obtain an 
eminently useful waiting-maid ; for it is clear that, though 
Miss Burney was the only woman of her time who could 
have described the death of Harrel, thousands might have 
been found more expert in tying ribbons and filling snuff- 
boxes. To grant her a pension on the civil list would have 
been an act of judicious liberality, honorable to the court. 
If this was impracticable, the next best thing was to let her 
alone. That the king and queen meant her nothing but 
kindness, we do not in the least doubt. But their kindness 
was the kindness of persons raised high above the mass of 
mankind, accustomed to be addressed with profound def- 
erence, accustomed to see all who approached them mortified 
by their coldness and elated by their smiles. They fancied 
that to be noticed by them, to be near them, to serve them, 
was in itself a kind of happiness ; and that Frances Burney 
ought to be full of gratitude for being permitted to pur- 
chase, by the surrender of health, wealth, freedom, domestic 



146 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

affection, and literary fame, the privilege of standing behind 
a royal chair and holding a pair of royal gloves. 

And who can blame them ? Who can wonder that princes 
should be under such a delusion, when they are encouraged 
in it by the very persons who suffer from it most cruelly ? 
Was it to be expected that George the Third and Queen 
Charlotte should understand the interest of Frances Burney 
better, or promote it with more zeal than herself and her 
father? No deception was practised. The conditions of 
the house of bondage were set forth with all simplicity. 
The hook was presented without a bait ; the net was spread 
in sight of the bird; and the naked hook was greedily swal- 
lowed, and the silly bird made haste to entangle herself in 
the net. 

It is not strange, indeed, that an invitation to court should 
have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced 
young woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch 
over the child, and to show her that on one side were only 
infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, 
peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honorable dis- 
tinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the 
part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported out of him- 
self with delight. Not such are the raptures of a Circassian 
father who has sold his pretty daughter well to a Turkish 
slave-merchant. Yet Dr. Burney was an amiable man, a 
man of good abilities, a man who had seen much of the 
world. But he seems to have thought that going to court 
was like going to heaven ; that to see princes and princesses 
was a kind of beatific vision; that the exquisite felicity 
enjoyed by royal persons was not confined to themselves, 
but was communicated by some mysterious efflux or reflec- 
tion to all who were suffered to stand at their toilets or to 
bear their trains. He overruled all his daughter's objec- 
tions, and himself escorted her to her prison. The door 
closed. The key was turned. She, looking back with ten- 



Madame B'Arhlay. 147 

der regret on all that she had left, and forward with anxiety 
and terror to the new life on which she was entering, was 
unable to speak or stand ; and he went on his way home- 
ward rejoicing in her marvellous x^rosperity. 

And now began a slavery of five years, of five years taken 
from the best part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or 
in recreations duller than even menial drudgery, under gall- 
ing restraints and amidst unfriendly or uninteresting com- 
panions. The history of an ordinary day was this. Miss 
Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she miglit 
be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after 
seven. Till about eight she attended in the queen's dress- 
ing-room, and had the honor of lacing her august mistress's 
stays, and of putting on the hoop, gown, and neck-hand- 
kerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in rummaging 
drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. 
Then the queen was to be powdered and dressed for the 
day. Twice a week her majesty's hair was curled and 
craped ; and this operation ap]iears to have added a full 
hour to the business of the toilet. It was generally three 
before Miss Burney was at liberty. Then she had two 
hours at her own disposal. To these hours we owe great 
part of her Diary. At five she had to attend her col- 
league, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old toad-eater, as 
illiterate as a chamber-maid, as proud as a whole German 
chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to 
conduct herself with common decency in society. With 
this delightful associate Frances Burney had to dine and 
pass the evening. The pair generally remained together 
from five to eleven, and often had no other company the 
whole time, except during the hour from eight to nine, when 
the equerries came to tea. If poor Frances attempted to 
escape to her own apartment, and to forget her wretchedness 
over a book, the execrable old woman railed and stormed, 
and complained that she was neglected. Yet, when Frances 



148 Select Esmys of Macaulay. 

stayed, she was constantly assailed with insolent reproaches. 
Literary fame was, in the eyes of the German crone, a 
blemish, a proof that the person who enjoyed it was meanly 
born, and out of the pale of good society. All her scanty 
stock of broken English was employed to express the con- 
tempt with which she regarded the author of Evelina and 
Cecilia. Frances detested cards, and indeed knew nothing 
about them ; but she soon found that the least miserable 
way of passing an evening with Madame Schwellenberg was 
at the card-table, and consented, with patient sadness, to 
give hours, which might have called forth the laughter and 
the tears of many generations, to the king of clubs and the 
knave of spades. Between eleven and twelve the bell rang 
again. Miss Burney had to pass twenty minutes or half an 
hour in undressing the queen, and was then at liberty to 
retire, and to dream that she was chatting with her brother 
by the quiet hearth in St. Martin's Street, that she was the 
centre of an admiring assemblage at Mrs. Crewe's, that 
Burke was calling her the first woman of the age, or that 
Dilly was giving her a check for two thousand guineas. 

Men, we must suppose, are less patient than women ; for 
we are utterly at a loss to conceive how any human being 
could endure such a life, while there remained a vacant gar- 
ret in Grub Street, a crossing in want of a sweeper, a parish 
workhouse, or a parish vault. And it was for such a life 
that Frances Burney had given up liberty and peaee, a happy 
fireside, attached friends, a wide and splendid circle of 
acquaintance, intellectual pursuits in which she was quali- 
fied to excel, and the sure hope of what to her would have 
been afiiuence. 

There is nothing new under the sun. The last great mas- 
ter of Attic eloquence and Attic wit has left us a forcible 
and touching description of the misery of a man of letters, 
who, lured by hopes similar to those of Frances, had entered 
the service of one of the magnates of Rome. ^' Unhappy 



I 



Madame D'Arblay. 14*J 

that 1 am ! " cries the victim of his own chiklish ambition : 
•• would nothing content me but that I must leave mine old 
pursuits and mine old companions, and the life which was 
without care, and the sleep which had no limit save mine 
own pleasure, and the walks which I was free to take where 
I listed, and fling myself into the lowest pit of a dungeon 
like this ? And, God ! for what ? Was there no way by 
which I might have enjoyed in freedom comforts even 
greater than those which I now earn by servitude ? Like 
a lion which has been made so tame that men may lead him 
about by a thread, I am dragged up and down, with broken 
and humbled spirit, at the heels of those to whom, in mine 
own domain, I should have been an object of awe and won- 
der. And, worst of all, I feel that here I gain no credit, 
that here I give no pleasure. The talents and accomplish- 
ments, which charmed a far different circle, are here out of 
place. I am rude in the arts of palaces, and can ill bear 
comparison with those whose calling, from their youth up, 
has been to flatter and to sue. Have I, then, two lives, 
that, after I have wasted one in the service of others, there 
may yet remain to me a second, which I may live unto 
myself ? " 

Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed 
the wretched monotony of Frances Burney's life. The court 
moved from Kew to AVindsor, and from Windsor back to 
Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and another 
dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant 
made a blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding 
between the gentlemen and the ladies. A half-witted French 
Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity. 
An unlucky member of the household mentioned a passage 
in the jNIorning Herald reflecting on the queen ; and forth- 
with Madame Schwellenberg began to storm in bad English, 
and told him that he made her " what you call perspire ! " 

A more important occurrence was the king's visit to 



150 Select Essays of Macaulay, 

Oxford. Miss Burney went in the royal train to Nuneham, 
was utterly neglected there in the crowd, and could with dif- 
ficulty find a servant to show the way to her bedroom, or a 
hairdresser to arrange her curls. She had the honor of 
entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages 
which formed the royal x^rocession, of walking after the 
queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of stand- 
ing, half dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august 
mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation. At Mag- 
dalene College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlor, 
where she sank down on a chair. A good-natured equerry 
saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some 
apricots and bread, which he had wisely put into his pockets. 
At that moment the door opened ; the queen entered ; the 
wearied attendants sprang up; the bread and fruit were 
hastily concealed. " I found," says poor Miss Burney, 
"that our appetites were to be supposed annihilated, at the 
same moment that our strength was to be invincible." 

Yet Oxford, seen even under such disadvantages, "re- 
vived in her," to use her own words, "a consciousness to 
X:)leasure which had long lain nearly dormant." She forgot, 
during one moment, that she was a waiting-maid, and felt 
as a woman of true genius might be expected to feel amidst 
venerable remains of antiquity, beautiful works of art, vast 
repositories of knowledge, and memorials of the illustrious 
dead. Had she still been what she was before her father 
induced her to take the most fatal step of her life, we can 
easily imagine what pleasure she would have derived from 
a visit to the noblest of English cities. She might, indeed, 
have been forced to travel in a hack chaise, and might not 
have worn so fine a gown of Chambery gauze as that in 
which she tottered after the royal party; but with what 
delight would she have then paced the cloisters of Magda- 
lene, compared the antique gloom of Merton with the 
splendor of Christ Church, and looked down from the dome 



Madame D'Arhlay. 151 

of the Radcliffe Library on the magnificent sea of turrets 
and battlements below ! How gladly would learned men 
have laid aside for a few hours Pindar's Odes and Aris- 
totle's Ethics, to escort the author of Cecilia from college 
to college ! What neat little banquets would she have 
found set out in their monastic cells ! With what eager- 
ness would pictures, medals, and illuminated missals have 
been brought forth from the most mysterious cabinets for 
her amusement ! How much she would have had to hear 
and to tell about Johnson as she walked over Pembroke, 
and about Reynolds in the antechapel of New College! But 
these indulgences were not for one who had sold herself 
into bondage. 

About eighteen months after the visit to Oxford, another 
event diversified the wearisome life which Frances led at 
court. Warren Hastings was brought to the bar of the 
House of Peers. The queen and princesses were present 
when the trial commenced, and Miss Burney was permitted 
to attend. During the subsequent proceedings a day rule 
for the same purpose was occasionally granted to her ; for 
the queen took the strongest interest in the trial, and, 
when she could not go herself to Westminster Hall, liked 
to receive a report of what had passed from a person who 
had singular powers of observation, and who was, more- 
over, acquainted with some of the most distinguished man- 
agers. The portion of the Diary which relates to this 
celebrated proceeding is lively and picturesque. Yet we 
read it, we own, witlf pain ; for it seems to us to prove that 
the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to 
feel the pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as 
incompatible with health of mind as the air of the Pontine 
marshes with health of body. From the first day she 
espouses the cause of Hastings with a presumptuous vehe- 
mence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty 
and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders 



152 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons. 
She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent 
man. She is at a loss to conceive how the managers can 
look at the defendant and not blush. Windham comes to 
her from the managers' box, to offer her refreshment. 
"But," says she, "I could not break bread with him." 
Then, again, she exclaims, " Ah, Mr. Windham, how came 
you ever engaged in so cruel, so unjust a cause ? " " Mr. 
Burke saw me," she says, " and he bowed with the most 
marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just 
after his opening speech, a speech which had produced a 
mighty effect, and which, certainly, no other orator that 
ever lived could have made. "My courtesy," she continues, 
" was the most ungrateful, distant, and cold ; I could not do 
otherwise ; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a 
cause." Now, not only had Burke treated her with con- 
stant kindness, but the very last act which he performed 
on the day on which he Avas turned out of the Pay-oflice, 
about four years before this trial, was to make Dr. Burney 
organist of Chelsea Hospital. When, at the Westminster 
election. Dr. Burney was divided between his gratitude for 
this favor and his Tory opinions, Burke in the noblest man- 
ner disclaimed all right to exact a sacrifice of principle. 
" You have little or no obligations to me," he wrote ; "but 
if you had as many as I really wish it were in my power, 
as it is certainly in my desire, to lay on you, I hope you do 
not think me capable of conferring them, in order to sub- 
ject your mind or your affairs to a painful and mischievous 
servitude." Was this a man to be uncivilly treated by a 
daughter of Dr. Burney, because she chose to differ from 
him respecting a vast and most complicated question, 
which he had studied deeply during many years, and which 
she had never studied at all ? It is clear, from Miss Bur- 
ney's own narrative, that when she behaved so unkindly to 
Mr. Burke, she did not even know of what Hastings was 



Madame D'Arlknj. 153 

accused. One thing, however, she must have known, that 
Burke had been able to convince a House of Commons, bit- 
terly prejudiced against himself, that the charges were well 
founded, and that Pitt and Dundas had concurred with Fox 
and Sheridan in supporting the impeachment. Surely a 
woman of far inferior abilities to Miss Burney might have 
been expected to see that this never could have happened 
unless there had been a strong case against the late gover- 
nor-general. And there was, as all reasonable men now 
admit, a strong case against him. That there were great 
public services to be set off against his great crimes is per- 
fectly true. But his services and his crimes were equally 
unknown to the lady who so confidently asserted his per- 
fect innocence, and imputed to his accusers, that is to say, 
to all the greatest men of all parties in the State, not 
merely error, but gross injustice and barbarity. 

She had, it is true, occasionally seen Mr. Hastings, and 
had found his manners and conversation agreeable. But 
surely she could not be so weak as to infer, from the gentle- 
ness of his deportment in a drawing-room, that he was 
incapable of committing a great State crime, under the 
influence of ambition and revenge. A silly miss, fresh 
from a boarding-school, might fall into such a mistake 5 but 
the woman who had drawn the character of Mr. Monckton 
should have known better. 

The truth is that she had been too long at court. She 
was sinking into a slavery worse than that of the body. 
The iron was beginning to enter into the soul. Accustomed 
during many months to watch the eye of a mistress, to re- 
ceive with boundless gratitude the slightest mark of royal 
condescension, to feel wretched at every symptom of royal 
displeasure, to associate only with spirits long tamed and 
broken in, she was degenerating into something fit for her 
place. Queen Charlotte was a violent partisan of Hastings. 
The kino:, it was well known, took the same side. To the 



154 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

king and queen all the members of the household looked 
submissively for guidance. The impeachment, therefore, 
was an atrocious persecution ; the managers were rascals ; 
the defendant was the most deserving and the worst used 
man in the kingdom. This was the cant of the whole pal- 
ace, from goldstick in waiting, down to the table-deckers 
and yeomen of the silver scullery ; and Miss Burney canted 
like the rest, though in livelier tones, and with less bitter 
feelings. 

The account which she has given of the king's illness 
contains much excellent narrative and description, and will, 
we think, be as much valued by the historians of a future 
age as any equal portion of Pepys's or Evelyn's Diaries. 
That account shows also how affectionate and compassionate 
her nature was. But it shows also, we must say, that her 
way of life was rapidly impairing her powers of reasoning 
and her sense of justice. We do not mean to discuss, in 
this place, the question, whether the views of Mr. Pitt or 
those of Mr. Fox respecting the regency were the more cor- 
rect. It is, indeed, quite needless to discuss that question ; 
for the censure of Miss Burney falls alike on Pitt and Fox, 
on majority and minority. She is angry with the House of 
Commons for presuming to inquire whether the king w\as 
mad or not, and whether there was a chance of his recover- 
ing his senses. "A melancholy day," she writes; "news 
bad both at home and abroad. At home the dear, unhappy 
king still worse ; abroad new examinations voted of the 
physicians. Good heavens ! what an insult does this seem 
from Parliamentary power, to investigate and bring forth to 
the world every circumstance of such a malady as is ever 
held sacred to secrecy in the most private families ! How 
indignant we all feel here no words can say." It is proper 
to observe that the motion which roused all this indignation 
at Kew was made by Mr. Pitt himself. We see, tlierefore, 
that the loyalty of the minister, who was then generally re- 



Madame Jj'Arhlay. 155 

garded as the most heroic champion of his prince, was luke- 
warm indeed when compared with the boiling zeal which 
hlled the pages of the back-stairs and the women of the 
bedchamber. Of the Regency Bill, Pitt's own bill, Miss 
Burney speaks with horror. " I shuddered," she says, " to 
hear it named." And again, "Oh, how dreadful will be 
the day when that unhappy bill takes place ! I cannot 
approve the plan of it." The truth is that Mr. Pitt, 
whether a wise and upright statesman or not, was a states- 
man; and, whatever motives he might have for impos- 
ing restrictions on the regent, felt that in some way or 
other there must be some provision made for the execution 
of some part of the kingly office, or that no government 
would be left in the country. But this Avas a matter of 
which the household never thought. It never occurred, as 
far as we can see, to the exons and keepers of the robes, 
that it was necessary that there should be somewhere or 
other a power in the state to pass laws, to preserve order, 
to pardon criminals, to fill up offices, to negotiate with for- 
eign governments, to command the army and navy. Nay, 
these enlightened politicians, and Miss Burney among the 
rest, seem to have thought that any person who considered 
the subject with reference to the public interest, showed 
himself to be a bad-hearted man. Nobody wonders at this 
in a gentleman-usher; but it is melancholy to see genius 
sinking into such debasement. 

During more than two years after the king's recovery, 
Frances dragged on a miserable existence at the palace. 
The consolations which had for a time mitigated the wretch- 
edness of servitude were one by one withdrawn. Mrs. 
Delany, whose society had been a great resource when the 
court was at Windsor, was now dead. One of the gentle- 
men of the royal establishment, Colonel Digby, appears to 
have been a man of sense, of taste, of some reading, and of 
prepossessing manners. Agreeable associates were scarce 



156 Select Essays of 3Iacaulay. 

in the prison-house, and he and Miss Burney therefore nat- 
urally became attached to each other. She owns that she 
valued him as a friend ; and it would not have been strange 
if his attentions had led her to entertain for him a senti- 
ment warmer than friendship. He quitted the court, and 
married in a way which astonished Miss Burney greatly, 
and which evidently wounded her feelings, and lowered him 
in her esteem. The palace grew duller and duller; Madame 
Schwellenberg became more and more savage and insolent ; 
and now the health of poor Frances began to give way ; and 
all who saw her pale face, her emaciated figure, and her feeble 
walk, predicted that her sufferings would soon be over. 

Frances uniformly speaks of her royal mistress and of 
the princesses with respect and affection. The princesses 
seem to have well deserved all the praise which is bestowed 
on them in the Diary. They were, we doubt not, most 
amiable women. But "the sweet queen," as she is con- 
stantly called in these volumes, is not by any means an 
object of admiration to us. She had undoubtedly sense 
enough to know what kind of deportment suited her high 
station, and self-command enough to maintain that deport- 
ment invariably. She was, in her intercourse with Miss 
Burney, generally gracious and affable, sometimes, when 
displeased, cold and reserved, but never, under any circum- 
stances, rude, peevish, or violent. She knew how to dis- 
pense, gracefully and skilfully, those little civilities which, 
when paid by a sovereign, are prized at many times their 
intrinsic value: how to pay a compliment; how to lend a 
book ; how to ask after a relation. But she seems to have 
been utterly regardless of the comfort, the health, the life 
of her attendants, when her own convenience was concerned. 
Weak, feverish, hardly able to stand, Frances had still to 
rise before seven, in order to dress the sweet queen, and to 
sit up till midnight, in order to undress the sweet queen. 
The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not. 



Madame jyArhlay, 157 

escape the notice of her royal mistress. But the established 
doctrine of the court was, that all sickness was to be con- 
sidered as a pretense until it proved fatal. The only waj^ 
in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion 
of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lac- 
ing and unlacing, till she fell down dead at the royal feet. 
^^ This," Miss Burney wrote, when she was suffering cruelly 
from sickness, watcliing, and labor, " is by no means from 
hardness of heart ; far otherwise. There is no hardness of 
heart in any one of them ; but it is prejudice, and want of 
personal experience." 

Many strangers sympathized with the bodily and mental 
sufferings of this distinguished woman. All who saw her 
saw that her frame was sinking, that her heart was break- 
ing. The last, it should seem, to observe the change was 
her father. At length, in spite of himself, his eyes were 
opened. In May 1790, his daughter had an interview of 
three hours with him, the only long interview which they 
had had since he took her to Windsor in 1786. She told 
him that she was miserable, that she was worn with atten- 
dance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, 
nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends 
were to her as though they were not, and were remembered 
by her as men remember the dead. From daybreak to mid- 
night the same killing labor, the same recreations, more 
hateful than labor itself, followed each other without 
variety, without any interval of liberty and repose. 

The doctor was greatly dejected by this news ; but was 
too good-natured a man not to say that, if slie wished to 
resign, his house and arms were open to her. Still, how- 
ever, he could not bear to remove her from the court. His 
veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry. It 
can be compared only to the grovelling superstition of those 
Syrian devotees who made their children pass through the 
fire to Moloch. When he induced his daughter to accept 



158 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained, as she tells 
us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set 
down in the contract of service, would be the result of her 
connection with the court. What advantage he expected 
we do not know, nor did he probably know himself. But, 
whatever he expected, he certainly got nothing. Miss Bur- 
ney had been hired for board, lodging, and two hundred a 
year. Board, lodging, and two hundred a year she had duly 
received. We have looked carefully through the Diary, in 
the hope of finding some trace of those extraordinary bene- 
factions on which the doctor reckoned. But we can discover 
only a promise, never performed, of a gown ; and for this 
promise Miss Burney was expected to return thanks, such 
as might have suited the beggar with whom St. Martin, in 
the legend, divided his cloak. The experience of four years 
was, however, insufficient to dispel the illusion which had 
taken possession of the doctor's mind; and, between the 
dear father and the sweet queen, there seemed to be little 
doubt that some day or other Frances woul^ drop down a 
corpse. Six months had elapsed since the interview between 
the parent and the daughter. The resignation was not sent 
in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark; 
but it soon ceased to produce a beneficial effect. She was 
stimulated with wine ; she was soothed with opium ; but in 
vain. Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was 
in a decline sjiread through the court. The pains in her 
side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the 
card-table of the old fury to whom she was tethered, three 
or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking harts- 
horn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would 
have excused her from work. But her majesty showed no 
mercy. Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang; the queen 
was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be 
dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at midnight. 
But there had arisen, in literary and fashionable society, 



Madame D' Arhlay. 159 

a general feeling of compassion for Miss Burney, and of 
indignation against both her father and the queen. "Ts 
it possible," said a great French lady to the doctor, " that 
your daughter is in a situation where she is never allowed 
a holiday ? " Horace Walpole wrote to Frances, to express 
his sympathy. Boswell, boiling over with good-natured 
rage, almost forced an entrance into the palace to see her. 
"My dear ma'am, why do you stay ? It won't do, ma'am ; 
you must resign. We can put up with it no longer. 
Some very violent measures, I assure you, will be taken. 
We shall address Dr. Burney in a body." Burke and Rey- 
nolds, though less noisy, were zealous in the same cause. 
Windham spoke to Dr. Burney, but found him still irreso- 
lute. " I will set the club upon him," cried Windham ; 
" Miss Burney has some very true admirers there, and I am 
sure they will eagerly assist." Indeed, the Burney family 
seem to have been apprehensive that some public affront 
such as the doctor's unpardonable foil}', to use the mildest 
term, had richly deserved, would be put upon him. The 
medical men spoke out, and plainly told him that his 
daughter must resign or die. 

At last paternal affection, medical authority, and the 
voice of all London, crying shame, triumphed over Dr. 
Burney's love of courts. He determined that Frances should 
write a letter of resignation. It was with difficulty that, 
though her life was at stake, she mustered spirit to put the 
paper into the queen's hands. " I could not," so runs the 
Diary, " summon courage to present my memorial : my 
heart always failed me from seeing the queen's entire free- 
dom from such an expectation. For though I was frequently 
so ill in her presence that I could hardly stand, I saw she 
concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers." 

At last, with a trembling hand, the paper was delivered. 
Then came the storm. Juno, as in the TEneid, delegated 
the work of vengeance to Alecto. The queen was calm and 



160 Select Essay h of Macaulay. 

gentle ; but Madame Scliwellenberg raved like a maniac in 
the incurable ward of Bedlam ! Such insolence ! Such in- 
gratitude ! Such folly ! Would Miss Burney bring utter 
destruction on herself and her family ? Would she throw 
away the inestimable advantage of royal protection ? Would 
she part with privileges which, once relinquished, could 
never be regained ? It was idle to talk of health and life. 
If people could not live in the palace, the best thing that 
could befall them was to die in it. The resignation was 
not accepted. The language of the medical men became 
stronger and stronger. Dr. Burney's parental fears were 
fully roused ; and he explicitly declared, in a letter meant 
to be shown to the queen, that his daughter must retire. 
The Scliwellenberg raged like a wild-cat. " A scene almost 
horrible ensued," says Miss Burney. " She was too much 
enraged for disguise, and uttered the most furious expres- 
sions of indignant contempt at our proceedings. I am sure 
she would gladly have confined us both in the Bastile, had 
England such a misery, as a fit place to bring us to our- 
selves, from a daring so outrageous against imperial wishes," 
This passage deserves notice, as being the only one in the 
Diary, so far as we have observed, which shows Miss Bur- 
ney to have been aware that she was a native of a free 
country, that she could not be pressed for a waiting-maid 
against her will, and that she had just as good a right to 
live, if she chose, in St. Martin's Street, as Queen Charlotte 
had to live at St. James's. 

The queen promised that, after the next birthday. Miss 
Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill 
kept, and her majesty showed displeasure at being reminded 
of it. At length, Frances was informed that in a fortnight 
her attendance should cease. " I heard this," she says, 
"with a fearful presentiment I should surely never go 
through another fortnight in so weak, and languishing, and 
painful a state of health. ... As the time of separation 



Madame D'Arhlay. 161 

approached, the queen's cordiality rather diminished, and 
traces of internal displeasure appeared sometimes, arising 
from an opinion I ought rather to have struggled on, live 
or die, than to quit her. Yet I am sure she saw how poor 
was my own chance, except by a change in the mode of life, 
and at least ceased to wonder, though she could not ap- 
prove." Sweet queen ! What noble candor, to admit that 
the undutifulness of people who did not think the honor of 
adjusting her tuckers worth the sacrifice of their own lives, 
was, though highly criminal, not altogether unnatural ! 

We perfectly understand her majesty's contempt for the 
lives of others where her own pleasure was concerned. 
But what pleasure she can have found in having Miss 
Burney about her, it is not so easy to comprehend. That 
Miss Burney was an eminently skilful keeper of the robes 
is not very probable. Few women, indeed, had paid less 
attention to dress. Now and then, in the course of five 
years, she had been asked to read aloud or to write a copy 
of verses. But better readers might easily have been found; 
and her verses were worse than even the poet laureate's 
birthday odes. Perhaps that economy which was among 
her majesty's most conspicuous virtues had something to 
do with her conduct on this occasion. Miss Burney had 
never hinted that she expected a retiring pension, and, in- 
deed, would gladly have given the little that she had for 
freedom. But her majesty knew what the public thought, 
and what became her own dignity. She could not, for very 
shame, suffer a woman of distinguished genius, who had 
quitted a lucrative career to wait on her, who had served 
her faithfully for a pittance during five years, and whose 
constitution had been impaired by labor and watching, to 
leave the court without some mark of royal liberality. 
George the Third, who, on all occasions where Miss Burney 
was concerned, seems to have behaved like an honest, good- 
natured gentleman, felt this, and said plainly that she was 



162 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

entitled to a provision. At length, in return for all the 
misery which she had undergone, and for the health whicli 
she had sacrificed, an annuity of one hundred pounds was 
granted to her, dependent on the queen's pleasure. 

Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once 
more. Johnson, as Burke observed, might have added a 
striking page to his poem on the Vanity of Human AVishes, 
if he had lived to see his little Burney as she went into the 
palace and as she came out of it. 

The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, 
of domestic affection, were almost too acute for her shat- 
tered frame. But happy days and tranquil nights soon 
restored the health which the queen's toilet and Madame 
Schwellenberg's card-table had impaired. Kind and anxious 
faces surrounded the invalid. Conversation the most pol- 
ished and brilliant revived her spirits. Travelling was 
recommended to her; and she rambled by easy journeys 
from cathedral to cathedral, and from watering-place to 
watering-place. She crossed the jSTew Forest, and visited 
Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beauti- 
ful valley of Sidmouth. Thence she journeyed by Powder- 
ham Castle, and by the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey to Bath, 
and from Bath, when the winter was approaching, returned, 
well and cheerful, to London. There she visited her old 
dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to 
the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till mid- 
night, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever. 

At this time England swarmed with French exiles, driven 
from their country b}^ the Kevolution. Such a woman as 
Miss Burney could not long resist the fascination of that 
remarkable society. She had lived with Johnson and Wind- 
ham, with Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Thrale. Yet she was 
forced to own that she had never heard conversation before. 
The most animated eloquence, the keenest observation, the 
most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to 



Bladame B'Arhlay. 163 

charm her. For Madame de Stael was there, and M. de 
Talleyrand. There, ^o, was M. de Narbonne, a noble rep- 
resentative of French aristocracy ; and with M. de Narbonne 
was his friend and follower General D'Arblay, an honorable 
and amiable man, with a handsome person, frank, soldier- 
like manners, and some taste for letters. 

The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the 
constitutional royalists of France rapidly vanished. She 
listened with rapture to Talleyrand and Madame de Stael, 
joined with M. D'Arblay in execrating the Jacobins and in 
weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French lessons 
from him, fell in love with him, and married him on no 
better provision than a precarious annuity of one hundred 
pounds. 

Here the Diar}^ stops for the present. We will, therefore, 
bring our narrative to a speedy close, by rapidly recounting 
the most important events which we know to have befallen 
Madame D'Arblay during the latter part of her life. 

M. D'Arblay's fortune had perished in the general wreck 
of the French Revolution ; and in a foreign country his 
talents, whatever they may have been, could scarcely make 
him rich. The task of providing for the family devolved 
on his wife. In the year 1796, she published by subscrip- 
tion her third novel, Camilla. It was impatiently exx)ected 
by the public ; and the sum which she obtained for it was, 
we believe, greater than had ever at that time been received 
for a novel. We have heard that she cleared more than 
three thousand guineas. But we give this merely as a 
rumor. Camilla, however, never attained popularity like 
that which Evelina and Cecilia had enjoyed ; and it must 
be allowed that there was a perceptible falling off, not 
indeed in humor or in power of portraying character, but in 
grace and in purity of style. 

We have heard that, about this time, a tragedy by Madame 
D'Arblay was performed without success. We do not know 



164 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

whether it was ever printed ; nor indeed have we had time 
to make any researches into its histoi*^^ or merits. 

During the short truce which followed the treaty of 
Amiens, M. D'Arblay visited France. Lauriston and La 
Fayette represented his claims to the French Government, 
and obtained a promise that he should be reinstated in his 
military rank. M. D'Arblay, however, insisted that he 
should never be required to serve against the countrymen 
of his wife. The First Consul, of course, would not hear of 
such a condition, and ordered the general's commission to 
be instantly revoked. 

Madame D'Arblay joined her husband at Paris a short 
time before the war of 1803 broke out, and remained in 
France ten years, cut off from almost all intercourse with 
the land of her birth. At length, when Napoleon was on 
his march to Moscow, she with great difficulty obtained 
from his ministers permission to visit her own countr}'^, in 
company with her son, who was a native of England. She 
returned in time to receive the last blessing of her father, 
who died in his eighty-seventh year. In 1814, she pub- 
lished her last novel. The Wanderer, a book which no judi- 
cious friend to her memory will attempt to draw from the 
oblivion into which it has justly fallen. 

We now turn from the life of Madame D'Arblay to her 
writings. There can, we apprehend, be little difference of 
opinion as to the nature of her merit, whatever differences 
may exist as to its degree. She was emphatically what 
Johnson called her, a character-monger. It was in the 
exhibition of human passions and whims that her strength 
lay ; and in this department of art she had, we think, very 
distinguished skill. 

But, in order that we may, according to our duty as kings 
at arms, versed in the laws of literary precedence, marshal 
her to the exact seat to which she is entitled, we must carry 
our examination somewhat farther. 



3Iadame D'Arhlay. 165 

There is, in one respect, a remarkable analogy between 
the faces and the minds of men. No two faces are alike ; 
and yet very few faces deviate very widely from the com- 
mon standard. Among the eighteen hundred thousand 
human beings who inhabit London, there is not one who 
could be taken by his acquaintance for another; yet we 
may walk from Paddington to Mile End without seeing one 
person in whom any feature is so overcharged that we turn 
round to stare at it. An infinite number of varieties lies 
between limits which are not very far asunder. The speci- 
mens which pass those limits on either side form a very 
small minority. 

It is the same with the characters of men. Here too 
the variety passes all enumeration. But the cases in which 
the deviation from the common standard is striking and 
grotesque are very few. In one mind avarice predominates ; 
in another, pride ; in a third, love of pleasure ; just as in 
one countenance the nose is the most marked feature, while 
in others the chief expression lies in the brow or in the 
lines of the mouth. But there are very few countenances 
in which nose, brow, and mouth do not contribute, though 
in unequal degrees, to the general effect ; and so there are 
very few characters in which one overgrown propensity 
makes all others utterly insignificant. 

It is evident that a portrait-painter, who was able only 
to represent faces and figures such as those which we pay 
money to see at fairs, would not, however spirited his exe- 
cution might be, take rank among the highest artists. He 
must always be placed below those who have skill to seize 
peculiarities which do not amount to deformity. The 
slighter those peculiarities, the greater is the merit of the 
limner who can catch them and transfer them to his can- 
vas. To paint Daniel Lambert or the living skeleton, the 
pig-faced lady or the Siamese twins, so that nobody can 
mistake them, is an exploit within the reach of a sign- 



166 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

painter. A third-rate artist might give us the squint of 
Wilkes, and the depressed nose and protuberant cheeks of 
Gibbon. It wouhl require a much higher degree of skill to 
paint two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas Law- 
rence, so that nobody who had ever seen them could for 
a moment hesitate to assign each picture to its original. 
Here the mere caricaturist would be quite at fault. He 
would find in neither face anything on which he could lay 
hold for the purpose of making a distinction. Two ample 
bald foreheads, two regular profiles, two full faces of the 
same oval form, would baffle his art; and he would be 
reduced to the miserable shift of writing their names at 
the foot of his picture. Yet there was a great difference ; 
and a i)erson who had seen them once would no more have 
mistaken one of them for the other than he would have 
mistaken Mr. Pitt for Mr. Fox. But the difference lay in 
delicate lineaments and shades, reserved for pencils of a 
rare order. 

This distinction runs through all the imitative arts. 
Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all 
caricature. He could take off only some strange pecu- 
liarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an 
Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. " If a man," said John- 
son, " hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, 
on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner 
and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, are 
yet too slight to be described. Foote, we have no doubt, 
could have made the Haymarket Theatre shake with laugh- 
ter by imitating a conversation between a Scotchman and 
a Somersetshireman. But Garrick could have imitated a 
conversation between two fashionable men, both models of 
the best breeding, Lord Chesterfield, for example, and Lord 
Albemarle ; so that no person could doubt which was which, 
although no person could say that, in any point, either Lord 
Chesterfield or Lord Albemarle spoke or moved otherwise 
than in conformity with the usages of the best society. 



Madame D'Arhlay. 167 

The same distinction is found in the drama and in ficti- 
tious narrative. Highest among those who have exhibited 
human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakspeare. 
His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, 
scarcely any monstrosity. The characters of which he has 
given us an impression, as vivid as that which we receive 
from the characters of our own associates, are to be reck- 
oned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one charac- 
ter is to be found which deviates widely from the common 
standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met 
it in real life. The silly notion that every man has one 
ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all 
the mysteries of his conduct finds no countenance in the 
plays of Shakspeare. There man appears as he is, made 
up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery 
over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet's rul- 
ing passion ? Or Othello's ? Or Harry the Fifth's ? Or 
Wolsey's ? Or Lear's ? Or Shylock's ? Or Benedick's ? 
Or Macbeth's ? Or that of Cassius ? Or that of Falcon- 
bridge ? But we might go on forever. Take a single ex- 
ample, Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be 
indifferent to revenge ? Or so eager for revenge as to be 
indifferent to jnoney ? Or so bent ou both together as to 
be indifferent to the honor of his nation and the law of 
Moses ? All his propensities are mingled with each other, 
so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we 
find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in real 
life. A superficial critic may say that hatred is Shylock's 
ruling passion. But how many passions have amalgamated 
to form that hatred ? It is partly the result of wounded 
pride : Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result 
of covetousness : Antonio has hindered him of half a mil- 
lion ; and, when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to 
the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and 
religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaberdine; 



168 Select Essays of Maeaiday. 

and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish 
Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which 
we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same 
way ; for it is the constant manner of Shakspeare to repre- 
sent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute 
dominion of one despotic propensity, but under a mixed gov- 
ernment, in which a hundred powers balance each other. 
Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most admire 
him for this, that while he has left us a greater number of 
striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he 
has scarcely left us a single caricature. 

Shakspeare has had neither equal nor second. But 
among the writers who, in the point which we have noticed, 
have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, 
we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of 
whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multi- 
tude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all 
such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly 
discriminated from each other as if they were the most 
eccentric of human beings. There are, for example, four 
clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in 
any parsonage in the kingdom, Mr. Edward Eerrars, Mr. 
Henry Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. 
They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle 
class. They have all been liberally educated. They all 
lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. 
They are all young. They are all in love. Not one of 
them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne. 
Not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope. 
Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses 
of each other ? No such thing. Harpagon is not more 
unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to 
Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's 
young divines to all his reverend brethren. And almost all 
this is done by touches so delicate that they elude analysis, 



i 



Madame B'Arhlay. 169 

that tliey defy the powers of description, and that we know 
them to exist only by the general effect to which they have 
contributed. 

A line must be drawn, we conceive, between artists of this 
class, and those poets and novelists whose skill lies in the 
exhibiting of what Ben Jonson called humors. The words 
of Ben are so much to the purpose that we will quote them : 

*' When some one peculiar quality 
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw 
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, 
In their confluxions all to run one way. 
This may be truly said to be a humor." 

There are undoubtedly persons, in whom humors such as 
Ben describes have attained a complete ascendency. The 
avarice of Elwes, the insane desire of Sir Egerton Brydges 
for a barony to which he had no more right than to the 
crown of Spain, the malevolence which long meditation on 
imaginary wrongs generated in the gloomy mind of Belli ng- 
ham, are instances. The feeling which animated Clarkson 
and other virtuous men against the slave-trade and slavery 
is an instance of a more honorable kind. 

Seeing that such humors exist, we cannot deny that they 
are proper subjects for the imitations of art. But we 
conceive that the imitation of such humors, however skilful 
and amusing, is not an achievement of the highest order ; 
and, as such humors are rare in real life, they ought, we 
conceive, to be sparingly introduced into works which pro- 
fess to be pictures of real life. Nevertheless, a writer may 
show so much genius in the exhibition of these humors as 
to be fairly entitled to a distinguished and permanent rank 
^mong classics. The chief seats of all, however, the places 
on the dais and under the canopy, are reserved for the few 
who have excelled in the difficult art of portraying charac- 
ters in which no single feature is extravagantly overcharged. 

If we have expounded the law soundly, we can have no 



170 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

difficulty in applying it to the pcarticular case before us. 
Madame D'Arblay has left us scarcely anything but humors. 
Almost every one of her men and women has some one pro- 
pensity developed to a morbid degree. In Cecilia, for 
example, Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some 
allusion to his own birth and station ; or Mr. Briggs, with- 
out some allusion to the hoarding of money ; or Mr. Hobson, 
without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of 
a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering 
some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favor 
with his customers ; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing 
apathy and weariness of life ; or Mr. Albany, without de- 
claiming about the vices of the rich and the misery of the 
poor ; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on 
her son ; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of 
her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious imperti- 
nence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively 
prattle. Miss Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame 
D'Arblay aimed at more, we do not think that she succeeded 
well. 

We are, therefore, forced to refuse to Madame D'Arblay a 
place in the highest rank of art ; but we cannot deny that, 
in the rank to which she belonged, she had few equals, and 
scarcely any superior. The variety of humors which is to 
be found in her novels is immense ; and though the talk of 
each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is 
not monotony, but a very lively and agreeable diversity. 
Her plots are rudely constructed and improbable, if we 
consider them in themselves. But they are admirably 
framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking groups of 
eccentric characters, each governed by his own peculiar 
whim, each talking his own peculiar jargon, and each bring- 
ing out by opposition the oddities of all the rest. AVe will 
give one example out of many which occur to us. All 
probability is violated in order to bring Mr. Delvile, Mr. 



Madame D'Arhlay. 171 

Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and Mr. Albany into a room together. 
But when we have them there, we soon forget probability in 
the exquisitely ludicrous effect which is produced by the 
conflict of four old fools, each raging with a monomania of 
his own, each talking a dialect of his own, and each inflam- 
ing all the others anew every time he opens his mouth. 

Madame D'Arblay was most successful in comedy, and, 
indeed, in comedy which bordered on farce. But we are in- 
clined to infer from some passages, both in Cecilia and in 
Camilla, that she might have attained equal distinction in 
the pathetic. We have formed this judgment, less from 
those ambitious scenes of distress which lie near the catas- 
trophe of each of those novels, than from some exquisite 
strokes of natural tenderness which take us here and there 
by surprise. We would mention as examples, Mrs. Hill's 
account of her little boy's death in Cecilia, and the parting 
of Sir Hugh Tyrold and Camilla, when the honest baronet 
thinks himself dying. 

It is melancholy to think that the whole fame of Madame 
D'Arblay rests on what she did during the earlier half of 
her life, and that everything which she published during 
the forty-three years which preceded her death lowered her 
reputation. Yet we have no reason to think that at the 
time when her faculties ought to have been in their matur- 
ity they were smitten with any blight. In The Wanderer 
we catch now and then a gleam of her genius. Even in the 
Memoirs of her father there is no trace of dotage. They 
are very bad ; but they are so, as it seems to us, not from 
a decay of power, but from a total j^erversion of j^ower. 

The truth is, that Madame D'Arblay's style underwent a 
gradual and most pernicious change, a change which, in 
degree at least, we believe to be unexampled in literary 
history, and of which it may be useful to trace the progress. 

When she wrote her letters to Mr. Crisp, her early 
journals, and her first novel, her style was not indeed bril- 



172 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

liant or energetic ; but it was easy, clear, and free from all 
offensive faults. When she wrote Cecilia she aimed higher. 
She had then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was 
the centre ; and she was herself one of his most submissive 
worshippers. It seems never to have crossed her mind that 
the style even of his best writings was by no means fault- 
less, and that even had it been faultless, it might not be 
wise in her to imitate it. Phraseology which is proper in 
a disquisition on the Unities, or in a preface to a Diction- 
ary, may be quite out of place in a tale of fashionable life. 
Old gentlemen do not criticise the reigning modes, nor do 
young gentlemen make love, with the balanced epithets 
and sonorous cadences which, on occasions of great dignity, 
a skilful writer may use with happy effect. 

In an evil hour the author of Evelina took The Rambler 
for her model. This would not have been wise even if she 
could have imitated her pattern as well as Hawkesworth 
did. But such imitation was beyond her power. She had 
her own style. It Avas a tolerably good one; and might, 
without any violent change, have been improved into a 
very good one. She determined to throw it away, and to 
adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by 
achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and 
over habit. She could cease to be Fanny Burney ; it was 
not so easy to become Samuel Johnson. 

In Cecilia the change of manner began to appear. But 
in Cecilia the imitation of Johnson, though not always in 
the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy ; and the 
passages which are so verbose as to be positively offensive 
are few. There were people who whispered that Johnson 
had assisted his young friend, and that the novel owed all 
its finest passages to his hand. This was merely the fabri- 
cation of envy. Miss Burney's real excellences were as 
much beyond the reach of Johnson as his real excellences 
were beyond her reach. He could no more have written 



Madame D'Arhlay. 173 

the Masquerade scene, or the Vauxhall scene, than she 
could have written the Life of Cowley or the Eeview of 
Soame Jenyns. But we have not the smallest doubt that 
he revised Cecilia, and that he retouched the style of many 
passages. We know that he was in the habit of giving 
assistance of this kind most freely. Goldsmith, Hawkes- 
worth, Boswell, Lord Hailes, Mrs. Williams, were among 
those who obtained his help. Nay, he even corrected the 
poetry of Mr. Crabbe, whom, we believe, he had never 
seen. When Miss Burney thought of writing a comedy, 
he promised to give her his best counsel, though he owned 
that he was not particularly well qualified to advise on 
matters relating to the stage. We therefore think it in the 
highest degree improbable that his little Fanny, when 
living in habits of the most affectionate intercourse with 
him, would have brought out an important work without 
consulting him; and, wdien we look into Cecilia, we see 
such traces of his hand in the grave and elevated passages 
as it is impossible to mistake. Before we conclude this 
article, we will give two or three examples. 

When next Madame D'Arblay appeared before the world 
as a writer, she was in a very different situation. She 
would not content herself with the simple English in 
which Evelina had been written. She had no longer the 
friend who, we are confident, had polished and strengthened 
the style of Cecilia. She had to write in Johnson's man- 
ner without Johnson's aid. The consequence was, that in 
Camilla every passage which she meant to be fine is de- 
testable ; and that the book has been saved from condem- 
nation only by the admirable spirit and force of those 
scenes in which she was content to be familiar. 

But there was to be a still deeper descent. After the 
publication of Camilla, Madame D'Arblay resided ten years 
at Paris. During those years there was scarcely any inter- 
course between France and England. It was with difficulty 



174 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

that a short letter could occasionally be transmitted. All 
Madame D'Arblay's companions were French. She must 
have written, spoken, thought, in French. Ovid expressed 
his fear that a shorter exile might have affected the 
purity of his Latin. During a shorter exile, Gibbon un- 
learned his native English. Madame D'Arblay had carried 
a bad style to France. She brought back a style which we 
are really at a loss to describe. It is a sort of broken John- 
sonese, a barbarous patois, bearing the same relation to the 
language of Rasselas which the gibberish of the negroes of 
Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords. Some- 
times it reminds us of the finest, that is to say, the vilest 
parts, of Mr. Gait's novels ; sometimes of the perorations of 
Exeter Hall; sometimes of the leading articles of the Morn- 
ing Post. But it most resembles the puffs of Mr. Kowland 
and Dr. Goss. It matters not what ideas are clothed in 
such a style. The genius of Shakspeare and Bacon united 
would not save a work so written from general derision. 

It is only by means of specimens that we can enable our 
readers to judge how widely Madame D'Arblay's three 
styles differed from each other. 

The following passage was written before she became 
intimate with Johnson. It is from Evelina : 

" His son seems weaker in his understanding, and more gay in his 
temper; but his gayety is that of a foohsh, overgrown school-boy, 
whose mirth consists in noise and disturbance. He disdains his father 
for his close attention to business and love of money, though he seems 
himself to have no talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior 
to either. His chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing 
his sisters, who in return most cordially despise him. Miss Branghton, 
the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly ; but looks proud, ill-tempered, 
and conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why ; for 
it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Polly Branghton 
is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I believe, 
very good-natured," 

This is not a fine style, but simple, perspicuous, and 



Madame D'Arhlay. 175 

agreeable. We now come to Cecilia, written during Miss 
Burney's intimacy witli Johnson ; and we leave it to our 
readers to judge whether the following passage was not at 
least corrected by his hand : 

"It is rather an imaginary than an actual evil, and though a deep 
wound to pride, no offence to morality. Thus have I laid open to you 
my whole heart, confessed my perplexities, acknowledged my vain- 
glory, and exposed with equal sincerity the sources of my doubts, and 
the motives of my decision. But now, indeed, how to proceed I know 
not. The difficulties which are yet to encounter I fear to enumerate, 
and the petition I have to urge I have scarce courage to mention. My 
family, mistaking ambition for honor, and rank for dignity, have long 
planned a splendid connection for me, to which, though my invariable 
repugnance has stopped any advances, their wishes and their views 
immovably adhere. I am but too certain they will now listen to no 
other. I dread, therefore, to make a trial where I despair of success. 
I know not how to risk a prayer with those who may silence me by a 
command." 

Take now a specimen of Madame D'Arblay's later style. 
This is the way in which she tells us that her father, on his 
journey back from the Continent, caught the rheumatism : 

" He was assaulted, during his precipitated return, by the rudest 
fierceness of wintry elemental strife ; through which, with bad accom- 
modations and innumerable accidents, he became a prey to the merci- 
less pangs of the acutest spasmodic rheumatism, which barely suffered 
him to reach his home, ere, long and piteously, it confined him, a tor- 
tured prisoner, to his bed. Such was the check that almost instantly 
curbed, though it could not subdue, the rising pleasure of his hopes of 
entering upon a new species of existence — that of an approved man 
of letters ; for it was on the bed of sickness, exchanging the light wines 
of France, Italy, and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of 
the Apothecaries' Hall, writhed by darting stitches, and burning with 
fiery fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that 
seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought 
and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening to burst forth with enjoy- 
ment ! " 

Here is a second passage from Evelina : 



176 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

" Mrs. Selw^n is very kind and attentive to me. She is extremely 
clever. Her understanding, indeed, may be called masculine ; but 
unfortunately her manners deserve the same epithet ; for, in studying 
to acquire the knowledge of the other sex, she has lost all the softness 
of her own. In regard to myself, however, as I have neither courage 
nor inclination to argue wdth her, I have never been personally hurt ai 
her want of gentleness, a virtue which nevertheless seems so essential 
a part of the female character, that I find myself more awkw^ard and 
less at ease with a woman who wants it than I do with a man." 

This is a good style of its kind ; and the following passage 
from Cecilia is also in a good style, though not in a faultless 
one. We say with confidence, either Sam Johnson or the 
Devil : 

" Even the imperious Mr. Del vile was more supportable here than in 
London. Secure in his own castle, he looked round him with a pride 
of power and possession which softened while it swelled him. His 
superiority was undisputed ; his will was without control. He was 
not, as in the great capital of the kingdom, surrounded by competitors. 
No rivalry disturbed his peace ; no equality mortified his greatness. 
All he saw were either vassals of his power or guests bending to his 
pleasure. He abated, therefore, considerably the stern gloom of his 
haughtiness, and soothed his proud mind by the courtesy of conde- 
scension." 

We will stake our reputation for critical sagacity on this, 
that no such paragraph as that which we have last quoted 
can be found in any of Madame D'Arblay's w^orks except 
Cecilia. Compare with it the following sample of her later 
style : 

" If beneficence be judged by the happiness which it diffuses, whose 
claim, by that proof, shall stand higher than that of Mrs. Montagu, 
from the munificence with which she celebrated her annual festival for 
those hapless artificers w^ho perform the most abject offices of any 
authorized calling, in being the active guardians of our blazing hearths ? 
Not to vainglory, then, but to kindness of heart, should be adjudged 
the publicity of that superb charity which made its jetty objects, for 
one bright morning, cease to consider themselves as degraded outcasts 
from all society." 



Madame D^Arhlay. 177 

We add one or two shorter samples. Sheridan refused to 
permit his lovely wife to sing in public, and was warmly 
praised on this account by Johnson. 

" The last of men," says Madame D'Arblay, " was Dr. 
Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integ- 
rity by nullifying the labors of talents." 

The Club, Johnson's Club, did itself no honor by reject- 
ing on political grounds two distinguished men, one a Tory, 
the other a Whig. Madame D'Arblay tells the story thus : 
'^ A similar ebullition of political rancor with that which so 
difficultly had been conquered for Mr. Canning foamed over 
the ballot-box to the exclusion of Mr. Eogers." 

An offense punishable with imprisonment is, in this lan- 
guage, an offense " which produces incarceration." To be 
starved to death is " to sink from inanition into nonentity." 
Sir Isaac Newton is " the developer of the skies in their 
embodied movements ; " and Mrs. Thrale, when a party of 
clever people sat silent, is said to have been " provoked by 
the dulness of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such re- 
nowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could 
have been caused by a dearth the most barren of all human 
faculties." In truth, it is impossible to look at any page of 
Madame D'Arblay's later works without finding flowers of 
rhetoric like these. Nothing in the language of these jar- 
gonists at whom Mr. Gosport laughed, nothing in the 
language of Sir Sedley Clarendel, approaches this new 
euphuism. 

It is from no unfriendly feeling to Madame D'Arblay's 
memory that we have expressed ourselves so strongly on 
the subject of her style. On the contrary, we conceive that 
we have really rendered a service to her reputation. That 
her later works were complete failures is a fact too noto- 
rious to be dissembled ; and some persons, we believe, have 
consequently taken up a notion that she was from the first 
an overrated writer, and that she had not the powers which 



178 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

were necessary to maintain her on the eminence on which 
gooil-luck and fashion had placed her. We believe, on the 
contrary, that her early popularity was no more than the 
just reward of distinguished merit, and would never have 
undergone an eclipse, if she had only been content to go on 
writing in her mother-tongue. If she failed when she 
quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in 
which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common 
to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed 
when he turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb 
and flow of the ocean, to apocalyptic seals and phials. 
Bentley failed when he turned from Homer and Aristoph- 
anes, to edit the Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he at- 
tempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth 
century. Wilkie failed when he took it into his head that 
the Blind Fiddler and the Rent-Day were unworthy of his 
powers, and challenged competition with Lawrence as a 
portrait-painter. Such failures should be noted for the 
instruction of posterity ; but they detract little from the 
permanent reputation of those who have really done great 
things. 

Yet one word more. Tt is not only on account of the 
intrinsic merit of Madame D'Arblay's early works that she 
is entitled to honorable mention. Her appearance is an 
important epoch in our literary history. Evelina was the 
first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a 
picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live. 
The Female Quixote is no exception. That work has un- 
doubtedly great merit, when considered as a wild satirical 
harlequinade ; but, if we consider it as a picture of life and 
manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any of 
the romances which it was designed to ridicule. 

Indeed, most of the popular novels which preceded Eve- 
lina were such as no lady would have written ; and many 
of them were such as no lady could, without confusion, own 



Madame D'Arblay. 179 

that she had read. The very name of novel was held in 
horror among religious people. In decent families, which 
did not profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong 
feeling against all such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two 
or three years before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of 
the great body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pro- 
nounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diaboli- 
cal knowledge. This feeling on the part of the grave and 
reflecting increased the evil from which it had sprung. 
The novelist having little character to lose, and having few 
readers among serious people, took without scruple liberties 
which in our generation seem almost incredible. 

Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy 
Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a 
better way. She first showed that a tale might be written 
in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London 
might be exhibited with great force and with broad comic 
humor, and which yet should not contain a single line in- 
consistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. 
She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful 
and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the 
right of her sex to an equal share in a fair and noble 
province of letters. Several accomplished women have fol- 
lowed in her track. At present, the novels which we owe 
to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of 
our country. No class of works is more honorably dis- 
tinguished by fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by 
pure moral feeling. Several among the successors of 
Madame D'Arblay have equalled her ; two, we think, have 
surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed 
gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; 
for, in truth, we owe to her not only Evelina, Cecilia, and 
Camilla, but also Mansfield Park and The Absentee. 



NOTES. 



MILTOlSr. 

The best cheap edition of Milton's poetical works, both for contiini- 
ous reading and for occasional reference, as well as for use in school 
as a text- book, is the Globe, with introductions by Professor David 
Masson. The Globe contains no notes, but abounds in interesting 
critical, biographical, and expository matter. The best annotated edi- 
tion is Masson's Poetical Works of John Milton, edited with memoir, 
introductions, notes, and an essay on Milton's English and versifica- 
tion ; 3 vols, octavo ; second edition, 1890. This is known as the 
Libmrtj Edition. Every school should, if possible, possess a copy of 
this beautiful and altogether satisfactory book. It will long remain 
the standard edition of Milton's poetical works. Printed in much 
smaller type than the foregoing, and not containing so much explan- 
atory matter, but very much cheaper, is another edition by the same 
editor, in three volumes of more convenient size. This book is within 
the means of every school. 

Masson's great Life of John Milton is too large to read and is very 
expensive ; nor, until the index volume shall be published, can it easily 
be referred to for special information. Access to it can usually be had 
in the larger public libraries. A life of Milton quite within reach even 
of the limited opportunity of high- school pupils is that by the Rev. 
Mark Pattison in the English Men of Letters series. Another small 
book suitable for young students is the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke's 
Milton in the series of Classical Writers. 

A valuable help in Milton study is a concordance, or verbal index, to 
the poems. The presence of this feature in Cleveland's Milton's Poet- 
ical Works makes it desirable to have this book in the class-room 
accessible to pupils. 

The proper time for classes to read Macaulay's essay is, naturally, 
when they are reading Milton. When their interest in the poet is once 

181 



182 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

aroused, then they should read as much of his poetry as possible, study 
his life and times, and obtain such comprehension as they can of his 
significance in English history and English literature. 

The Essay on Milton was first published as an article in the Edin- 
burgh Review, in August, 1825. "It excited," says Dean Milman, 
" greater attention than any article which had ever appeared not 
immediately connected with the politics of the day." Canning says 
of it, "Considering its length, it is perhaps one of the most pleasing 
and brilliant essays in the English Language," 

P. 1. Cyriac Skinner. See Milton's Sonnets and the intro- 
ductions to them in the Globe edition. 

P. 2. Find the quoted verse in the Sonnets. 

P. 3. an age too late. Find in Paradise Lost the famous pas- 
sage in which the quoted words occur. Macaulay's doctrine, tliat 
" as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines," muv 
profitably be discussed in the class. In connection with this subject 
see Channing's essay, Remarks on the Character and Writings of 
John Milton. 

P. 6. the greatest of poets. This indirect, allusive kind of 
reference is a favorite device of Macaulay. It gives the reader, as 
it were, an enigma for solution, and thus keeps his faculties on the 
alert. Sometimes the enigma is not easy to solve at once. To be 
compelled to stop reading and engage in a little research is an 
excellent stimulus. In this case no one can doubt a moment what 
poet is meant. — Find the quoted lines in the works of this poet, 
and present the entire passage in the class. 

P. 7. the ancient bards of Wales and Germany. Recollect- 
ing that the people of AVales are Celtic, and those of Germany 
Teutonic, consider whether Macaulay is not, in this passage, 
partially in error. To become satisfied on this point, read what 
you can find under the word hard in encyclopcedias and diction- 
aries. Read also Gray's Bard. 

P. 9. the Epistle to Manso. As the text shows, this is one of 
Milton's Latin poems. Do not fail to look it up, either in tlie 
Latin or in the translation given by Masson in his Library edition, 
Vol. I. Translations of all Milton's Latin, Greek, and Italian 
poems are given by the poet Cowper. 

P. 10. Young people should of course read Homer. There are 
several translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey as distinctly 



Notes. 183 

belonging to English literature as the great original creations of 
the Anglo-Saxon mind. All the European peoples have, from 
time immemorial, read the Homeric poems, and an acquaintance 
with them is fundamental to the study of English or of any other 
modern literature. 

P. 11. Modern writers of every nationality are wont to assume, 
in readers of every class, an acquaintance with the Arabian Nights. 

P. 12. The chapter on the Origin of Ancient Tragedy in Moul- 
ton's Ancient Classical Drama is short and interesting. 

P. 13. It should be remembered that the Greek tragedies have 
all been translated and published in cheap forms. A notable 
translation of the Agamenmon of JEschylus is that by the poet 
Browning. 

P. 11. sad Electra's poet. This, like all other quotations from 
Milton, should be searched for till found. 

The Faithful Shepherdess, the Aminta, the Pastor Fido. 
These are the titles of pastoral dramas, composed, respectively, by 
the Elizabethan dramatist, Fletcher, and by the Italian poets, 
Tasso and Guarini. They need not be looked up. 

P. 15. Dorique delicacy. To understand tlie adjective Doric, 
or Dorian, one must consider that the Greek poet, Theocritus, the 
great original and pattern of all the pastoral poets since his day, 
wrote in the Doric dialect : but it will not be possible to appreciate 
the connotations of the word without some acquaintance with the 
idyls of the ancient poet himself. This the pupil will find it easy 
and pleasant to obtain, either from the prose translation of Theoc- 
ritus by Mr. Andrew Lang, or from the translation in verse by Mr. 
C. S. Calverley. The pupil should also note Milton's use of the 
word in Lycidas and elsewhere. 

P. 16. "A warm admirer of Robert Hall, Macaulay heard with 
pride how the great preacher, then well-nigh worn out with that 
long disease, his life, was discovered lying on the floor, employed 
in learning by aid of grammar and dictionary enough Italian to 
enable him to verify the parallel between Milton and Dante." — 
Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay. But it is easy for the high-school 
pupil to-day to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy with- 
out learning Italian, for Longfellow's translation is peculiarly clear 
and simple, and is abundantly furnished with explanatory helps. 

P. 19. the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. A speci- 



184 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

men of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso can easily be seen in Wiffen's 
translation of the Jerusalem Delivered, Canto IV., stanzas 4-8. 
Klopstock's description of the devils is to be found in the second 
canto of the INIessias, for whoever reads German. 

obtrude their idiosyncrasies. There are three conspicuous 
passages in Paradise Lost where Milton speaks of himself. Find 
them. 

those modern beggars for fame, "who, etc. Read Macaulay's 
essay on Moore's Life of Lord Byron, and it will become clear that 
by "those modern beggars for fame" the essayist means Byron 
and the poets of Byronisni, who proclaim to the world their misery, 
their despair, their discontent with life. 

r. 22. A victory, etc. Find each sonnet thus alluded to. 

loosed the knees : an Homeric expression of frequent occur- 
rence in the battle-scenes of the Iliad. 

PP. 27, 28. Book of Life. Legions of angels, not made 
with hands. Find the originals of these expressions. 

P. 28. Beatific Vision. See Revelation, Chap. XXL 

P. 30. doubting Thomases or careless Gallios. Do not fail 
to verify these references from the New Testament. 

Brissotines. See any history of the French Revolution, or any 
eticyclopfedia, article Brh»ot. 

W^hitefriars. See JNLacaulay's History, Chap. III. 

P. 32. the hero of Homer. Ulysses in the Odyssey. 

P. 34. the licensing system. Extracts from the prose work 
of Milton here referred to should be selected by pupils, with the 
aid of the teacher, and read in the class. 

P. 36. Verify the biographical allusions by reference to any life 
of the poet. 



Notes. 185 



JOHN BUNYAN. 

The essay here reprinted first appeared as an article in the Encyclo- 
psedia Britannica hi 1854. In connection with it the student should 
read Macaulay's essay reviewing Southey's edition of the Pilgrim's 
Progress with its Life of John Bunyan. This life by Southey will 
also be found readable. The Bunyan in the English Men of Letters 
series is from the pen of the historian, J. A, Froude. Everywhere 
interesting and appreciative, this is perhaps the book chiefly to recom- 
mend to the young student as collateral reading on Bunyan. 

But whatever life of Bunyan, or book about Bunyan, the student 
reads, he should by no means fail to read Pilgrim's Progress. The 
great allegory is still profoundly interesting, and allusions to it abound 
throughout recent Phiglish literature. Editions of the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress are numerous. It is only necessary to caution the reader against 
choosing a text in which Bunyan's homely phraseology has been 
altered to make it conform to some modern editor's idea of refinement 
and elegance. For one of the chief objects which the scholar to-day 
has in view in reading Bunyan is to karn how the English language 
of the seventeenth century shaped itself in the speech of uneducated 
Englishmen. To the student of language the diction and the style of 
the illiterate are peculiarly interesting. The prose of Milton and the 
prose of Clarendon are not more important in their way than is the 
prose of Bunyan in its way. " The style of Bunyan," says Macaulay, 
"is delightful to every reader, and invakiable as a study to eveiy 
person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English lan- 
guage. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. 
There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of 
theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant, AYe have observed 
several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two 
syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. 
For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle 
disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, 
this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly 
sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so 
readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book 
which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, 
and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed." 

Besides Southey's edition, above mentioned, there may be recom- 
mended to the young reader the Pilgrim's Progress in the Golden 
Treasury series, and the volume, edited Ijy the Pev. Etlnnmd Venn- 



186 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

bles for the Clarendon Press, containing not only the Pilgrim's 
Progress, but two other interesting works of Bunyan, the Grace 
Abounding and A Relation of his Imprisonment, with biographical 
introduction and notes. 

P. 39. Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. Titus Gates figures 
conspicuously at a certain period iu the reigns of Charles II. and 
flames II. Do not fail to read about him in Macaulay 's History. 
Of Mrs. Elizabeth Brownrigg, of the shocking cruelties she prac- 
tised on her victims, of her trial for murder, and of her execution 
in 1767, see a full account in Celebrated Trials, Vol. IV. 

P. 40. a village Rochester. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 
was " one of the most brilliant libertines of the age " of Charles 
II. See Encyclo. Brit. 

P. 42. Bedlam: a most interesting word. Do not fail to look 
up its history. The account of it in the New English Dictionary is 
very full. 

P. 43. the lamentable end of Francis Spira. Francis Spira 
was a lawyer in good standing and a respectable citizen of Venice. 
Having professed Protestantism, he was brought before the ecclesi- 
astical authorities and compelled to recant his heresy. This recan- 
tation so wi-ought upon his mind that he fell into a lamentable 
state of remorse and despair, and suffered the most dreadful 
agonies until his death in 1548. The fate of Spira made a pro- 
found impression upon the Protestants of that day. It was made 
the subject of a drama, the Conflict of Conscience, by Nathaniel 
Woodes, in 1581, and in our own day Mr. J. Hain Friswell has 
taken it as the theme of his poem entitled Francis Spira. 

P. 46. Fox's Book of Martyrs is to be found, at least in an 
abridged form, in many public libraries. Inquisitive pupils can 
easily look it up. 

P. 47. that humane and generous Persian king. See Ezra, I. 

P. 49. "Will's. See Macaulay's account of the London coffee- 
houses in the famous Chapter III. of his History. 

P. 52. the Spiritual Quixote. Macaulay probably refers to a 
work bearing this title published in 1772 by Richard Graves, in 
which he " ridiculed the intrusion of the laity into spiritual func- 
tions and the ' enthusiasm ' of the Methodists with a severity 
asserted even then to be excessive." 



Notes, 187 



SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

Complete editions of Johnson's works are no longer in great re- 
quest, and may perhaps not easily he found in the bookstores, but 
are to he seen in the public libraries. The Easselas has often been 
reprinted. Every pupil should read this little story. As a specimen 
of Johnson's prose it may, for the time being, be sufficient for the 
young student. It is one of those books that absolutely cannot be 
spared from even a decent education in English literature. Erom the 
Lives of the Poets a selection comprising six of the most important 
ones has been edited, with preface and notes, by Matthew Arnold. 
This book should be in the school library. The Rambler and the 
Idler are still to be found separately printed in the series of British 
Essayists. Of Johnson's poetry a sufficient sf)ecimen is accessible in 
the reprint of the London and the Vanity of Human Wishes in Hales's 
Longer English Poems. 

Many young people have read with delight Boswell's Life of John- 
son. This book never goes out of fashion. But very recently a 
beautiful edition of it has been issued by Mr. Birkbeck Hill, who is 
pre-eminently the Johnson specialist of this generation, as Professor 
Masson is its Milton specialist. Mr. Hill's edition of Boswell, with 
its full and minute notes, is one of the very best books illustrating 
eighteenth century life and literature. Large as it is, it is not too 
large for the high-school library, where it would be a source of peren- 
nial interest both for reading and for reference. Croker's Boswell, 
"with upwards of fifty engravings," can always be had in Bohn's 
" Cheap Series." The Johnson in the Men of Letters series is by that 
very competent writer, Mr. Leslie Stephen. The famous essay by 
Carlyle on Croker's Boswell is really an essay on Johnson, and must 
not be omitted from any course of reading on the great literary auto- 
crat. Carlyle's essay is easily accessible. The American publishers 
of Matthew Arnold's Six Chief Lives, above referred to, have included 
it in their edition of this book. 

Like the essays on Bunyan and Goldsmith in this volume, this 
admirable summary of Johnson's life appeared originally as an article 
in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Another essay of Macaulay review- 
ing Croker's Boswell is closely related to this and should be read in 
connection with it. 



188 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

P, 55. the- royal touch. Queen Anne was the last English 
sovereign who touched for the " king's evil." Find from Macbeth 
who was the first. 

P. 60. usher of a grammar school. Be sure you understand 
the meaning of the expression grammar school as used in England. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Porter is said to have been born in 1689. 

the Queensberrys and Lepels, families of high rank in the 
English nobility; not worth looking up. 

Titty, a nickname for Elizabeth. 

P. 62. The Seasons is still in many libraries. 

The Beggar's Opera is no longer read, nor deserves to be ; 
though the same writer's Fables continue to be reprinted. 

P. 63. ordinaries. We still have the thing, though not the name. 

the Harleian Library ; that is, the library collected by Robert 
Ilarley, Earl of Oxford, which Osborne bought and employed 
Johnson to catalogue. See Encyclo. Brit, under Oxford. 

P. 64. the Blues of the Roman Circus against the Greens. 
See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chap. XL. 

P. 65. his own Tom Tempest. See Idler, No. 10. 

P. 68. "Grub Street, the name of a street in London much in- 
habited by writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary 
poems ; whence any mean production is called Grub street." — Jofin- 
son's Dictionary. 

'Warburton. See in the Life of Pope a characteristic sketch of 
Warburton by Johnson himself. 

P. 69. Chesterfield's Letters to his Son is stiM a much esteemed 
and often reprinted classic. Johnson very properly says of it, 
" Take out the immorality, and M> should be put into the hands of 
every young gentleman." The pupil may be referred to the vol- 
ume in the Knickerbocker Nugget series, — Letters, Sentences, and 
Maxims by Lord Chesterfield. 

P. 70. his tragedy. See page 61. L-ene is no longer read. 
The story on which it is founded is thus given in Hawkins's Life 
of Johnson : — 

Mahomet the Great, first emperor of the Turks, in the year 1453 laid 
siege to the city of Constantinople, then possessed by the Greeks, and, 
after an obstinate resistance, took and sacked it. Among the many yonng 
women whom his commanders thouglit fit to lay hands on and present to 
him was one named Irene, a Greek, of incomparable beanty and sncli rare 



Notes, 180 

perfection of body and mind, that the emperor, becoming enamored of her, 
neglected the care of his government and empire for two whole years, and 
thereby so exasperated the Janizaries, that they mutinied and threatened 
to dethrone him. To prevent this mischief, Mustapha Bassa, a person of 
great credit with him, undertook to represent to him the great danger to 
which he lay exposed by the indulgence of his passion : he called to his 
remembrance the character, actions, and achievements of his predecessors, 
and the state of his government; and, in short, so roused him from his 
lethargy, that he took a horrible resolution to silence the clamors of his 
people by the sacrifice of this admirable creature. Accordingly, he com- 
manded her to be dressed and adorned in the richest manner that she and 
her attendants could devise, and against a certain hour issued orders for 
the nobility and leaders of his army to attend him in the great hall of his 
palace. When they were all assembled, himself appeared with great pomp 
and magnificence, leading his captive by the hand, unconscious of guilt 
and ignorant of his design. With a furious and menacing look, he gave 
the beholders to understand that he meant to remove the cause of their 
discontent; but bade them first view that lady, whom he held with his 
left hand, and say wiiether any of them, possessed of a jewel so rare and 
precious, would for any cause forego her; to which they answered that he 
had great reason for his affection toward her. To this the emperor replied, 
that he would convince them that he was yet master of himself. And 
having so said, presently, with one of his hands catching the fair Greek by 
the hair of the head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one 
blow, struck off her head, to the great terror of them all ; and having so 
done, he said unto them, " Now by this judge whether your emperor is 
able to bridle his affections or not." 

P. 72. Bubb Dodington.; a statesman of inferior note in the 
reigns of the second and third Georges. See a characteristic slur- 
ring allusion to him in Macaulay's essay on the Earl of Cliatham. 

P. 73. Sir Roger, etc. Everybody should be able to identify 
these allusions. They may be looked up in any edition of the 
Spectator by means of the index. 

Squire Bluster, etc. It will be interesting to look these up in 
the Rambler. 

P. 74. a letter written with singular energy and dignity. 

Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield is an excellent specimen both 

of the writer's moral quality and of his English style. We give it 

entire. 

To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield. 

,, -. - February 7, 1755. 

My Lord, 

I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of the World, that two 

papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written 



190 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

by yoiu' Lordship. To be so distinguished, is au honor, which, being very 
little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to receive, 
or in what terms to acknowledge. 

AVhen, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I 
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your 
address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vain- 
queur dii vainqneur de la terre ; — that I might obtain that regard for 
which I saw the world contending ; but I found my attendance so little en- 
couraged, that neither jjride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. 
When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all 
the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I 
had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all 
neglected, be it ever so little. 

Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward 
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been 
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, 
and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of 
assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treat- 
ment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before. 

The Shepherd of Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found 
him a native of the rocks. 

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man 
struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encum- 
bers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of 
my labors, had it been early, had been kind ; but it has been delayed till 1 
am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart 
it ; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asper- 
ity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be 
unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, 
which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any 
favoi-er of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, 
if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that 
dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exaltation, my 
Lord, 

Your Lordship's most humble, 

Most obedient servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 

In the preface the author truly declared, etc. The passage 
which thus moved Home Tooke was the following : — 

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not 
be forgotten that much likewise is performed ; and though no book was 
ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solici- 



Notes. 191 

tous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns ; yet 
it may gratify curiosity to inform it tliat the English Dictionary was 
written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of 
the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of 
academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness 
and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to ob- 
serve, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in 
an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexi- 
cons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few vol- 
umes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive ; if 
the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian acade- 
micians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni ; if the embodied 
critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were 
obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, 
I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I 
could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what could it avail me? I have 
protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk 
into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds : I therefore 
dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from cen- 
sure or from praise. 

P. 75. Junius and Skinner ; seventeenth-century scholars who 
devoted themselves to the study of Old English and the other 
Teutonic languages. Of scientific philology as now understood 
little was known in their day, or in Johnson's. 

Spunging-houses. When was imprisonment for debt abolished 
in England ? 

P. 78. made Hector quote Aristotle, etc. It will be an easy 
and pleasant search to verify these references. 

the Lord Privy Seal at this time was Lord Gower. In a con- 
versation with Boswell on the political allusions which he had in- 
serted in his Dictionary Johnson said : " You know, Sir, Lord 
Gower forsook the old Jacobite interest. When I came to the 
word Renegado, after telling that it meant ' one who deserts to the 
enemy, a revolter,' I added, sometimes we say a Gower. Thus it 
went to the press : but the printer had more wit than I, and struck 
it out." 

P. 82. formed themselves into a club. The club thus formed 
still flourishes. In 1861: it celebrated its centennial with great 
eclat. It is interesting to note that Johnson defines a club as " an 
assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions." To 
describe a man fitted by temperament to be a congenial member of 
a club, he invented the adjective clubbable. 



192 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

P. 84. Whitefield. Refer to Franklin's Autobiography for in- 
teresting matter concerning this famous preacher. 

P. 8(5. Buck and Maccaroni. Do you fully agree witli Macau- 
lay's incidental remark about these words? 

P. 88. Journey to the Hebrides. Do not fail to look up at 
least the beautiful passage in this work in which Johnson describes 
his emotions on visiting lona. 

P. 89. Maophersoii. Extracts from Ossian can be easily- looked 
up and brought into the class. The standing of Macpherson in 
English literature should be investigated and reported on. 

P. 92. Gilbert Walmsley; see P. GO. 

Button had been, earlier in the century, proprietor of a coffee 
house which was the resort of political and literary celebrities. The 
other allusions can easily be verified and explained. 

P. 95. in a solemn and tender prayer. This prayer can be 
given from Boswell : '' Almighty God, Father of all mercy, heljt 
me by thy grace, that I may, with humble and sincere thankfulness, 
remember the comforts and conveniences which I have enjoyed at 
this place ; and that I may resign them with holy submission, 
equally trusting in thy protection when thou givest and when thou 
takest away. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, have mercy upon me. 
To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, 
guide, and defend them, that they may so pass through this world, 
as finally to enjoy thy everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake, 
Amen." 

had married an Italian fiddler, etc. By this marriage Mrs. 
Thrale became Mrs. Piozzi. Lookup, as e.g., in the Encyclo. Brit., 
the dates of Mr. Thrale's death and of Mrs. Thrale's marriage, 
and note what is said of the character of Mr. Piozzi : then con- 
sider if you agree with Macaulay's contemptuous way of speaking 
of this second marriage. Look up, also, the letters that passed be- 
tween Johnson and Mrs. Thrale at this time. These may be found 
in Four Centuries of English Letters, by W. Baptiste Scoones. 

allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures 
in Hamlet. The story of the Ephesian matron, originally told by 
the Latin writer, Petronius, can be read in Jeremy Taylor's Holy 
Dying, last chapter. It is also the subject of a "comic serenata" 
by Isaac Bickerstaff, 1769. The allusion to the two ])iclw'es the 
learner can verify without help. 



I 



Notes. 193 

P. 96. Frances Barney stood weeping at the door. See 
the essay on Madame D 'Aiblay, in this volume, page 140. 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Of the works of Goldsmith the popular ones are very popular 
indeed, and are kept constantly in print in every variety of form, 
often with abundant annotation and illustration. Everybody is ex- 
pected to be acquainted with the Vicar of Wakefield, the Deserted 
Village, and the Traveller, and with the Comedies. But there are 
other productions of this pleasing writer that may still be read with 
interest. A good Goldsmith for the school library should contain all 
the poetical and dramatic writings and, with due expurgation, such of 
the prose pieces as are most original and most characteristic of the 
genius of the autlior. The Globe Goldsmith, edited by Professor 
Masson, is not planned for scliool use. Besides the better known 
works named above, the Globe contains the Citizen of the World, 
Essays, The Bee, An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learn- 
ing, the biographies of Bolingbroke, Parnell, Voltaire, and Nash, and 
all the minor and miscellaneous poems. In no other volume are all 
these writings so easily accessible. 

The famous biographies of Goldsmith are named and characterized 
by Macaulay in his essay. To these we may now add the life by Mr. 
William Black in the Men of Letters series, and that by Mr. Austin 
Dobson in the series of Great Writers. Professor Masson's memoir 
in the Globe is briefer than the standard lives of the poet, but in ani- 
mation and beauty of style and in sustained interest, quite worthy to 
be named in their company. Pupils will find especially attractive, in 
any of the biographies, the famous Goldsmith anecdotes, so illustra- 
tive of the poet's temperament as well as of the lives and manners of 
the notable men with whom he associated, 

P. 99. banshees. See this word, differently spelled, in the Lady 
of the Lake, III. vii. See also Scott's note on the passage. 

In what war had the " old quartermaster " fought ? 

the glorious and immortal Memory : a standard form of 
toast used in drinking to the memory of William III. 

P. 103. letters purporting to be addressed by a Chinese 
traveller, etc. It was the Chinese letters that, collected and re- 



194 Select Essays of Maeaulay. 

printed, atteiwaids formed the Citizen of the World. This work, 
and the Life of Beau Nash, are to be found in the Globe Goldsmith. 

P. 104. the nine original members of the Club were Joshua 
Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Nugent, Anthony Chamier, Topham 
Beauclerk, Bennett Langton, John Hawkins, Samuel Johnson, and 
Oliver Goldsmith. Four of these men are distinct and conspic- 
uous personalities in eighteenth-century history and literature : 
they should be looked up and reported on in the class. Garrick and 
Boswell were later accessions to the Club. 

P. 105. had taken chambers in the more civilized region 
of the Inns of Court. To understand references to localities in 
London, the student should consult Baedeker's London or Hare's 
Walks in London. The chambers which Goldsmith took on this 
occasion were in Wine Office Court in Fleet St. It was not till 
he received his payment for The Goodnatured Man ( p. 107) that 
he fitted up the rooms in the Temple, referred to on page 113. 

P. 107. Bayes in the Rehearsal. Look up these names in 
Adams's Dictionary of English Literature. 

The finest poem in the Latin language. Maeaulay probably 
refers to Lucretius's De Rerum Natura. 

P. 109. He -was very nearly hoaxed, etc. By whom? 

P. 110. Which was in the right, Maupertuis or Goldsmith? 

P. 113. A single man living in the Temple, etc. 

On the first floor of No. 2, Brick Court, Middle Temple, lived the 
learned Blackstone. Here the great lawyer was immersed in writing the 
fourth volume of his famous Commentaries; hut in his calculation of 
the trials of a legal life, there was one which he had not foreseen. Oliver 
Goldsmith had taken the rooms above him, and sorely was he disturbed by 
the roaring comic songs in which the author of The Vicar of Wakefield was 
wont to indulge, and by the frantic games of blind-man's-buft which preceded 
his supper parties, and the dancing which followed them. Here Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, coming in suddenly, found the poet engaged in furiously kicking 
round the room a parcel containing a masquerade dress which he had 
ordered and had no money to pay for; and here, on April 4, 1774, poor 
Goldsmith died, from taking too many James's powders, when he had 
been forbidden to do so by his doctor, — died, dreadfully in debt, though 
attended to the grave by numbers of the poor in the neighborhood, to whom 
he had never failed in kindness and charity. — Harems Walks in London. 

Lord Clive — Sir La-wrence Dundas. The former name is a 
celebrated one in English history. See JNIacaulay's essay, Lord Clive. 



Notes. 195 

Sir Lawrence Diindas "acquired an immense fortune as commissary 
to the army in Germany, which procured for him the title of 
Baronet." 

P. 114. the spot was not marked by any inscription, etc. 
The flat stone bearing the inscription " Here lies Oliver Goldsmith," 
which visitors to London now see by the side of the walk along the 
north side of the Temple Church, was placed there in 1860, as 
near as possible to where the remains are supposed to lie. 

P. 115. Johnson \vrote the inscription. Do not fail to look 
up this inscription in the biographies. It is a notable piece of 
epitaphian Latin. Certain lines of it are often quoted. 



MADAME D'ARBLAY. 

As compared with the subjects of the four preceding essays in this 
volume, Madame D'Arblay is an unimportant figure in English litera- 
ture. In the immense development of the literature of fiction in this 
century EveUna and Cecilia have relatively lost in attractiveness for 
the multitude, and only novel-readers of unusual enterprise, drawn 
perhaps by Macaulay's sympathetic essay, are apt to find them out 
and to learn from experience that even these old stories still possess a 
charm of their own. But to the student of eighteenth-century life 
and manners both the Novels and the Diary are indispensable. With 
the increasing interest in historical studies such books as the Diary 
will gain in importance. The young student who desires to read 
beyond the dry text-books and abridgments of history will find in 
Madame D'Arblay's Diary both entertainment and instruction in 
ample measure. 

Evelina can be obtained in inexpensive form in the Tauchnitz Col- 
lection of British Authors, and both Evelina and Cecilia are to be had 
in Bohn's Novelists' Library. The Diary is reprinted in various forms 
and will be found in the public libraries. Especial mention should be 
made of The Early Diary of Frances Burney, 1768-1778, with a selec- 
tion from her correspondence, and from the journals of her sisters, Susan 
and Charlotte Burney : edited by Annie Raine Ellis, London, 1889. 

P. 116. The numerous allusions in the first paragraph can easily 
be looked up by the pupil. Such as have reference to the ages of 
writers should be carefully verified by noting dates. 



196 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

The fooleries of Delia Crusca. Look up this name in Adams's 
Dictionary of English Literature. See also Encyclo. Brit, under 
the word Academy, Vol. I. p. 73. Read up also on William Git- 
ford. If you read French, and have access to Littre's large French 
Dictionary, see what he says under the word Crusca. 

P. 122. Colman, Twining, etc. Most of these names will be 
found in easily accessible books. Thomas Twining, born in 1734, 
was famous in his day as translator of Aristotle's Poetics. James 
Harris, 1700-1780, was the author of Hermes, a well-known work 
on language. Giuseppe Baretti was an Italian scholar, long resi- 
dent in London, and the author of an Italian-English dictionary, 
still in use. John Hawkesworth published, among other things, 
an account of the voyages of the fatuous navigators, Byron, Wall is, 
Carteret, and Cook. 

P. 123. Meltonian ardor. Read in the Encyclo. Brit, the 
article on the town of INlelton-Mowbray, and see if you get any 
light on the meaning of this epithet. 

The Italian singers and the peers and peeresses whose names 
appear on this page all figure in Frances Barney's Early Diary, 
and it would be of no use to look them up elsewhere. Macaulay 
mentions Lord Ashburnham's gold key because Fanny herself men- 
tions it in connection with this nobleman's office as Groom of the 
Stole and First Lord of the Bedchamber. See Encyclo. Brit, 
under Royal Household. 

Bruce was the great African traveller of that day. He is con- 
spicuous in the Diary. 

P. 124. Omai was an Otaheitan whom Captain Cook, tlie great 
navigator, brought to England on his first voyage. He was a 
great lion in London society. He is often mentioned in the Diary ; 
Boswell reports a speech of Johnson about him ; and JNIacaulay 
tells a little anecdote of him in his essay on the Principal Italian 
Writers. The reference to Oberea, queen of Otaheite, and to 
Opano is also to be explained from the Diary. Opano is Sir 
Joseph Banks, who visited Otaheite in the capacity of naturalist 
to Captain Cook's first expedition. Banks was much admired by 
Oberea. The stories about Mr. Banks and the dusky queen greatly 
amused the London public, and there was much jesting on the 
subject. 

P. 12G. Master Betty, sometimes called the Young Roscius, 



Notes. 107 

was born in 1791. In his early teens he developed a marvellous 
talent for the stage, and astonished and delighted the London 
theatre-goers of his day by his success in playing the most difficult 
roles of the standard drama. During his brief career as a boy 
actor he laid up a fortune, on which he lived during a long life of 
obscurity. 

Van Artevelde, a tragedy by Sir Henry Taylor, published in 
1834. 

Jack Sheppard, a bad, sensational play by J. B. Buckstone. 
Both this and the novel of the same name by W. Harrison Ains- 
worth, are founded on the career of John Shepherd, a celebrated 
criminal, who was executed in 1724. 

P. 128. Lady Coventry (Maria Gunning), "as Garrick often 
related, drove to his house, and sent in word that she had a 
moment's business. He went to the side of her carriage : ' There, 
Mr. Garrick,' said Lady Coventry, 'I put into your hands a 
play which the best judges tell me will do honor to you and the 
author.' It was not necessary for her to say more. Garrick 
obeyed as if she had been the tenth Muse, and prepared the play 
with the utmost despatch." — Appendix to Annie Raine Ellis's edi- 
tions of the Early Diary of Frances Burney. 

P. 132. Hampstead, a northern suburb of London, formerly 
had mineral wells and was a place of fashionable resort. 

P. 134. Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter are 
to be found in Sheridan's Rivals. Do not fail to read this famous 
play. It was first acted three years before the publication of 
Evelina. 

P. 135. jfcenrick, Wolcot, George Steevens, can easily be 
looked up. Wolcot wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar. 
In his " Lousiad " he thus makes mention of Fanny Burney : — 

As careless as the artist, trunks designing, 
About the trifling circumstance of lining; 
Whether of Cumberland he use the plays, 
Miss Burney's novels, or Miss Seward's lays. 

The "polecat John Williams" may be seen, with yet another 
zoological metaphor attached to his name, in Macaulay's essay on 
Warren Hastings, near the end. This should suffice for him. 

a bad writer of our time. The opening pages of Macaulay's 



198 Select Essays of Macaulay. 

essay on Croker's edition of Bos well will show who is meant. The 
animosity between this " bad writer " and Macaulay is shown in 
many ways in the writings of each. 

P. 136. The croAvd of inferior admirers. For interesting ref- 
erences to these persons, see the Diary. 

P. 137. The Greek verses are from the Iliad, II. 527-529, and 
mean, — " Ajax the less, that was not so great as was the Telamo- 
nian Ajax, but far less." " Dr. Thomas Francklin, some time Greek 
professor at Cambridge. We find Fanny describing him in 1779 
as a 'square old gentleman, well-wigged, formal, grave, and impor- 
tant,' \vho asked her, ' Is not your name Evelina, Ma'am ? ' " — Annie 
Raine Ellis, Early Diary of Frances Burney. 

P. 139. Miss Bayes. The fitness of the name which Fanny 
applies to herself is easily seen. For a hundred years the Rehearsal, 
a farce written by the Duke of Buckingham in 1671, had main- 
tained its popularity, and had recently been revived by Garrick. 
The original purpose of this farce had been to satirize the poet 
Dryden, w^ho was especially conspicuous as a writer for the stage. 
The chief character in the play was Bayes, who stands therefore as 
a ridiculed and humiliated aspirant to dramatic honors. Long after 
Dryden had ceased to be thought of as the object of the satire, the 
fai'ce continued to be played because its motive continued to be 
appreciated. Bayes was the type of a vain, would-be dramatist 
properly brought to grief. 

P. 140. She had to blush, etc. See the essay on Samuel 
Johnson. 

P. 142. The Probationary Odes were anonymous satires by 
various persons, published in 1774, on the occasion of the appoint- 
ment of Thomas Warton to the Poet Laureateship. The bold 
mockery of these satires did not spare even the royal family. 

P. 145. St, James's Palace was the chief residence of the Eng- 
lish sovereigns from William III. to George IV. 

P. 145. the death of Harrel, in Cecilia. 

P. 148. The last great master of Attic eloquence, etc. The 
reference is to Lucian, a Greek writer of the second century a.d., 
from whose essay, — On those employed for hire as compayiions of per- 
sons of rank, the passage is quoted. This essay was written by Lucian 
"to dissuade a Greek philosopher from accepting a place in a 
Roman household, by giving a humorous description of the miseries 
attending it." 



Notes. 199 

P. 151. about Reynolds in the antechapel of New College. 

See any account of Reynolds's works, as e.g., in the Encyclo. Brit. 

P. 154. the King's illness and the vehement debates in Par- 
liament concerning the regency may be looked up in any history 
of England, as e.g., in Knight. But do not fail to read the pages 
referring to it in Macaulay's essay on William Pitt. 

P. 165. Daniel Lambert. See Encyclo. Brit., article Corpulency. 

P. 169. The quoted verses are from Jonson's Every Man out of 
his Humor, prologue. 

P. 169. The avarice of Elwes. John Elwes, an English gen- 
tleman of rank, was a notorious miser. He died in 1789. " His 
name has become a byword for sordid penury." Sir Egerton 
Brydges has sufficient literary and historical prominence to be 
easily looked up. To understand the reference to Bellingham, 
read up the assassination of Mr. Perceval in Knight's, or any 
other, history of England. This occurred in 1812. Of Clarkson, 
the great abolitionist, you will find it easy to read in any history 
or encyclopaedia. 

P. 174. Exeter Hall in London has been for many years the 
great meeting place for religious and philanthropic societies. 

Mr. Ro-wland and Dr. Goss were conspicuous advertisers in 
the newspapers of Macaulay's day. 

P. 177. Mr. Gosport, in Cecilia; Sir Sedley Clarendel, in 
Camilla. 

P. 178. Bentley, Inigo, Wilkie, Lawrence, can be easily looked 
up. Look for Liigo under his surname, Jones. 

The Female Quixote is a novel by Mrs. Charlotte Lennox. It 
was published in 1752, and may still be looked up in the libraries. 

P. 179. Sir Antony Absolute. See Rivals. 

what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama. See an 
extremely interesting account of Jeremy Collier and what he did 
for the English drama, in Macaulay's essay on the Comic Drama- 
tists of the Restoration. 

The writings of Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth should not 
be allowed, in this generation, to become entirely forgotten. 



APPENDIX. 



The following extracts from Macaulay's correspondence 
will be found interesting and instructive as showing how a 
great master of diction conceived the duty of a writer as 
regards choice of words and phrases. The first extract is 
from a letter to Napier, editor of the Edinburgh Review, 
and the second is the letter to Leigh Hunt there referred 
to. 

(Macaulay to Napier.) 

And now a few words about Leigh Hunt. He wrote to me yester- 
day in great distress, and enclosed a letter which he had received from 
you, and which had much agitated him. In truth, he misunderstood 
you ; and you had used an expression which was open to some little 
misconstruction. You told him that you should he glad to have a 
"gentlemanlike" article from him, and Hunt took this for a reflection 
on his birth. He implored me to tell him candidly whether he had 
given you any offence, and to advise him as to his course. I replied 
that he had utterly misunderstood you ; that I was sure you meant a 
literary criticism ; that your taste in composition was more severe than 
his, more indeed than mine ; that you were less tolerant than myself 
of little mannerisms springing from peculiarities of temper and train- 
ing ; that his style seemed to you too colloquial ; that I myself thought 
that he was in danger of excess in that direction ; and that, when you 
received a letter from him promising a very " chatty " article, I was 
not surprised that you should caution him against his besetting sin. I 
said that I was sure that you wished him well, and would be glad of his 
assistance ; but that he could not expect a person in your situation to 
pick his words very nicely ; that you had during many years superin- 
tended great literary undertakings ; that you had been under the neces- 
sity of collecting contributions from great numbers of writers, and that 
you were responsible to the public for the whole. Your credit was so 
deeply concerned that you must be allowed to speak plainly. I knew 

201 



202 Appendix. 

that you had spoken to men of the first consideration quite as plainly 
as to him. I knew that you had refused to insert passages written by 
so great a man as Lord Brougham. I knew that you had not scrupled 
to hack and hew articles on foreign politics which had been concocted 
ill the Hotels of Ambassadors, and had received the imprimatur of 
Secretaries of State. I said that therefore he must, as a man of sense, 
suffer you to tell him what you might think, whether rightly or wrongly, 
to be the faults of his style. As to the sense which he had put on one 
or two of your expressions, I took it on myself, as your friend, to affirm 
that he had mistaken their meaning, and that you would never have 
used those words if you had foreseen that they would have been so 
understood. Between ourselves, the w^ord "gentlemanlike" was used 
in rather a harsh way. Now I have told you what has passed between 
him and me ; and I leave you to act as you think fit. I am sure that 
you will act properly and humanely. But I must add that I think you 
are too hard on his article. 

(Macaulay to Leigh Hunt.) 

Albany, October 29, 1841. 
My Dear Sir, — I do not wonder that you are hurt by Napier's 
letter, but I think that you a little misunderstand him. I am confident 
that he has not taken any part of your conduct ill, and equally confi- 
dent that by the expression gentlemanlike^ which certainly he might 
have spared, he meant not the smallest reflection either on your char- 
acter or manners. I am certain that he means merely a literary criti- 
cism. His taste in composition is what would commonly be called 
classical, not so catholic as mine, nor so tolerant of those mannerisms 
which are produced by the various tempers and trainings of men, and 
which, within certain limits, are, in my judgment, agreeable. Napier 
would thoroughly appreciate the merits of a writer like Bolingbroke or 
Kobertson ; but would, I think, be unpleasantly affected by the pecu- 
liarities of such a writer as Burton, Sterne, or Charles Lamb. He 
thinks your style too colloquial ; and, no doubt, it has a very colloquial 
character. I wish it to retain that character, which to me is exceed- 
ingly pleasant. But I think that the danger against which you have 
to guard is excess in that direction. Napier is the very man to be 
startled by the smallest excess in that direction. Therefore I am not 
surprised that, when you proposed to send him a chatty article, he took 
fright, and recommended dignity and severity of style ; and care to 
avoid what he calls vulgar expressions, such as hit. The question is 



Appendix. 203 

purely one of taste. It has nothing to do with the morals or the 
honor. 

As to the tone of Napier's criticism, you must remember that his 
position with regard to the Revieiv, and the habits of his life, are such 
that he cannot be expected to pick his words very nicely. He has 
superintended more than one great literary undertaking, — the En- 
cijclopoidia Britannica, for example. He has had to collect contri- 
butions from hundreds of men of letters, and has been answerable to 
the publishers and to the public for the whole. Of course he has been 
under the necessity of very frequently correcting, disapproving, and 
positively rejecting articles; and is now as little disturbed about such 
things as Sir Benjamin Brodie about performing a surgical operation. 
To my own personal knowledge, he has positively refused to accept 
papers even from so great a man as Lord Brougham. He only a few 
months ago received an article on foreign politics from an eminent 
diplomatist. The style was not to his taste ; and he altered it to an 
extent which greatly irritated the author. Mr. Carlyle formerly wrote 
for the Review, — a man of talents, though, in my opinion, absurdly 
overpraised by some of his admirers. I believe, though I do not know, 
that he ceased to write because the oddities of his diction and his new 
words, compounded a la Teutonique, drew such strong remonstrances 
from Napier. I could mention other instances, but these are sufficient 
to show you what I mean. He is really a good, friendly, and honor- 
able man. He wishes for some assistance, but he thinks your style 
too colloquial. He conceives that, as editor of the Bevieiv, he ought to 
tell you what he thinks. And, having during many years been in the 
habit of speaking his whole mind on such matters almost weekly to all 
sorts of people, he expresses himself with more plainness than delicacy. 
I shall probably have occasion to write him in a day or two. I will 
tell him that one or two of his phrases have hurt your feelings, and 
that, I think, he would have avoided them if he had taken time to 
consider. 

If you ask my advice, it is this. Tell him that some of his expres- 
sions have given you pain ; but that you feel that you have no right to 
resent a mere difference of literary taste ; that to attempt to unlearn a 
style already formed and to acquire one completely different, would, as 
he must feel, be absurd, and that the result would be something intol- 
erably stiff and unnatural ; but that, as he thinks that a tone rathe^ 
less colloquial would suit better with the general character of the 
Beview, you will, without quitting the easy and familiar manner which 
is natural to you, avoid whatever even an unreasonably fastidious taste 



2U4 Appetultx. 

could regard as vulgarity. This is my honest advice. You may easily 
imagine how disagreeable it is to say anything about a difference 
between two persons for both of whom I entertain a sincere regard. 

Of Macaulay's habit of illustrating his writing with allu- 
sions Thackeray writes as follows : — 

Take at hazard any three pages of the Essays or the History : and, 
glimmering below the stream of the narrative, you, an average reader, 
see one, two, three, half a score of allusions to other historic facts, 
characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Your 
neighbor, wlio has his reading and his little stock of literature stowed 
away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, 
indicating, not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this 
master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble, precious toil, 
of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he 
travels a hundred miles to make a line of description. 

The following quotations from Trevelyan's Life of Macau- 
lay show that the great writer owed his success in literature 
chiefly to his capacity for work, to his habit of self-correc- 
tion and of endless painstaking : — 

The main secret of INIacaulay's success lay in this, that to extraordi- 
dary fluency and facility he united patient, minute, and persistent dili- 
gence. He well knew, as Chaucer knew before him, that 

There is na workeman 
That cau bothe worken wel and hastilie. 
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie. 

If his method of composition ever comes into fashion, books prob- 
ably will be better, and undoubtedly will be shorter. As soon as he 
had got into his head all the information relating to any particular epi- 
sode m his history (such, for instance, as Argyll's expedition to Scot- 
land, or the attainder of Sir John Fenwick, or the calling in of the 
clipped coinage), he would sit down and write off the whole story at a 
headlong pace ; sketching in the outlines under the genial and auda- 
cious impulse of a first conception; and securing in black and white 
each idea, and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed straight from 
his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript, at this stage, to 



Appendix. 205 



the eyes of any one but himself, appeared to consist of cokimn after 
column of dashes and flourishes, in which a straight line, with a half- 
formed letter at each end, and another in the middle, did duty for a 
word. 

As soon as Macaulay had finished his rough draft, he began to fill it 
in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning ; written in so 
large a hand, and with such a multitude of erasures, that the whole six 
pages were, on an average, compressed into two pages of print. This 
portion he called his 'task,' and he was never quite easy unless he 
completed it daily. More he seldom sought to accomplish ; for he had 
learned by long experience that this was as much as he could do at his 
best ; and except when at his best, he never would work at all. 

Macaulay never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it was afj 
good as he could make it. He thought little of recasting a chapter in 
order to obtain a more lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of 
reconstructing a paragraph for the sense of one happy stroke or apt 
illustration. Whatever the worth of his labor, at any rate it was a 
labor of love. 







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